Prospero
I plucked this little cutey, a baby Tasmanian Devil out of the creek. He was cold and shivering so I wrapped him in a towel, put him a box with some fresh meat and water in a warm room. (I’m an ex vet nurse).
His home is in the Shakespeare Hills (hence I’ve dubbed him ‘Prospero’) in Far North West Tasmania, an area adjacent to the Tarkine, an area nominated to be protected by the current Statement of Principles/Intergovernmental forest agreement, but which is STILL being logged and trashed. I get a number of rare, vulnerable, endangered critters dropping in as the surrounding forest is/has been clearfelled, burnt, aerial sown (and the seedlings dying!) and turned to plantations.
How he ended up floating in the creek is his story alone, but his future epilogue could well be …. A Tempestuous one! …
Prospero’s speech
“Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint: now, ’tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free .”
Whose hands do I put him in to give him the best future chance?
A government agency who still allows his habitat to be destroyed?
A wildlife park who will take his freedom?
I’d like to think the caring public would applaud his pluck and save this little devils hide by calling the government to account to ensure his natural home is not turned to rubble and dust.
