That’s A Pademelon, Cock, Not A Thylacine

That animal that jumps your fence and nibbles your veggie patch?

Gobbling lettuce, tomato, zucchini, seedlings by the batch?

Anything that’s growing well, lush and tender and green?

Well that’s a pademelon, cock, not a thylacine.

From highlands down to grasslands, snowcaps to the sea,

Our little Tassie battler roams wherever he wants to be.

Not elite enough for Willem Dafoe to hunt on silver screen;

That’s a pademelon, cock, not a thylacine.

A freaky, clumsy thump in a west coast drizzly night!

Then a sudden stillness: camouflage by sound and light.

You’d probably never find him even with a flash machine;

That’s a pademelon, cock, not a thylacine.

A true Tasmanian who lives on (despite the roadkill blues),

Wild and free across the land, not a face for clickbait news.

Not dying out in a lonely zoo, but feasting like a queen,

That’s a pademelon, cock, not a thylacine.

That animal which peers from glades, or among the buttongrass?

He’s our wild philosopher, pondering all that’s come to pass:

A pouchy, hoppy Socrates, with eyes both wise and keen.

That’s a pademelon, cock, not a thylacine.

A classic Tassie furry face, and a distinctive hunch and crouch,

And inbred as they come, cock: look, two heads in the pouch!

And possibly the cutest critter the world has ever seen,

That’s a pademelon, cock, not a thylacine.

As for our long lost tiger…he’s gone but not forgotten –

No glimpse in seven decades, cock, so save your thylaspottin’.

Safely resting in our dreams and in folk tales for the tellin’,

That’s yer thylacine, cock, not yer pademelon.

Alan Whykes is a poet based in Moonah who has a thing for pademelons. And penguins.