Carnivorous Nights Read online

  We had recently written a book about New York City's wildlife. Coyotes in the Bronx. Bald eagles flying over Central Park. Cockroaches in the kitchen sink. It was time, we decided, to explore something more exotic. Our friend Alexis Rockman, an artist with a similar fixation on nature, certainly thought so. He had been pestering us to go on a trip, some kind of working adventure, for years. We would write. He would paint. “Enough with the rats and pigeons,” he said. “Let's blow this town.”

  Alexis was the one person who knew about our relationship with the thylacine. His mother was an archaeologist who had worked at the natural history museum when he was a kid, and its hallways—filled with fossils, habitat dioramas, and dead animals—had been his childhood playground. He knew every inch of the place. As a result, he shared our fascination with the thylacine, though not to the same obsessive degree.

  We found Alexis at his basement studio in Tribeca. He was adding tiny species of tropical butterflies to a five-foot-by-seven-foot scene of a South American rain forest. We took a seat on his couch and studied the vines and weird, sinister blooms.

  What we would find hanging in Alexis's studio was always a surprise. One week it might be a giant picture of a tree of life gone haywire. Another time it might be a self-portrait of Alexis, his own body lying dead and decomposing in a jungle. Or maybe raccoons having sex with roosters. His paintings were imbued with dark and disturbing images from the natural world—of species, extinction, evolution, and coming disaster. They pictured lurid landscapes filled with real and imaginary creatures.

  The crammed bookshelves in his studio reflected these interests. Beside coffee-table books on artists such as Winslow Homer and Martin Johnson Heade, titles included the Golden Guide to Spiders and Their Kin, Dangerous Animals, and Dearest Pet: On Bestiality. He had his own small collection of taxidermy—as well as a well-loved (living) pet cat— and on his desk he kept a dried-out bat in a jar.

  “We've just been to the museum,” we told him.

  “Have you been indulging your thylacine fetish again?” He flicked a dot of red onto the wings of the butterfly he was painting. “That taxi-dermy's so fucking beautiful—and incredibly sad.”

  “So you think it's extinct?”

  “Of course.”

  “You probably wouldn't want to go to Tasmania then.”

  He didn't answer right away. Instead, he cleaned off his palette and put his brushes in turpentine. Then he stretched out on the floor of his studio with his shorts hiked up and took a drag on a joint. Though we were eager for him to say yes, we were anxious about what that might mean. Our eyes followed the thin column of smoke emanating from his mouth as we tried to picture what Alexis would be like as a traveling companion. On the one hand, he was superconfident, talented, and successful. Just over six feet tall, he had lanky, model good looks and magazines such as Vogue and Elle were nearly as likely to print a photo of him as they were one of his paintings. He was also athletic. He played highly competitive basketball and might have played college ball if Manhattan's School of Visual Arts had fielded a team. Over the years, he had produced hundreds of paintings—oils, watercolors—that had sold through his Chelsea art gallery for millions of dollars. On the other hand, he oozed vibes of selfdoubt, and his moods were unpredictable. He was a New York neurotic with a twist: George Costanza in the body of Narcissus. Nothing was ever enough. If he had a solo show at a gallery, he wanted a traveling museum retrospective that focused on his entire career. He was a workaholic, simultaneously driven and racked by anxiety, and at one time had smoked two and a half packs of Camel filters a day to calm himself down. Lately, he had switched from cigarettes to marijuana, and this self-prescribed after-hours hit of pot really seemed to do the trick, bringing his jittery brand of ambition down to the level of the average superachiever.

  “Tasmania,” he said slowly. “I don't know …I have to prepare for a big show in London next year.”

  We had brought over our laptop and clicked on a forty-second black-and-white film of the Tasmanian tiger taken in 1933. Filmed at the Hobart zoo, the footage had a creepy air of unreality. The tiger—the last one confirmed to be alive—paced back and forth in its cage, showing off rangy, muscular legs and zebralike stripes. After a few seconds, it yawned, revealing a set of razor-sharp teeth, and extended its jaws almost impossibly wide. For a moment, it looked like a crocodile. Then it flopped down and lifted its big head like a dog.

  “Holy shit,” Alexis said. “I would have killed to see that.”

  Alexis pulled down a beat-up old atlas and opened it to a page showing a map of Australasia—New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Tasmania was a little triangle floating near the bottom, about 150 miles south of the Australian mainland. A dotted line ran through the blue ink of the Indian Ocean. It arced through the Malay Archipelago and cut a swath between the islands of Bali and Lombok, between Borneo and Sulawesi. It was marked “Wallace's Line.”

  Alexis traced the line with the tips of his fingers. “This is what makes it interesting,” he said.

  Alfred Russel Wallace was a naturalist, a contemporary of Darwin's, who in 1856 had traveled from Bali to Lombok—a space of just fifteen watery miles—and been in for the surprise of his life. It was as if he had passed through a veil into another world. Species were more different between those two islands than they were across oceans. While Wallace primarily focused on birds in his study of the region, the most obvious difference to us was that the mammals on the other side of Wallace's Line had pouches. Australasia was filled with odd creatures such as kangaroos and koalas. And Tasmania was home to some of the strangest of all the re-gion's animals. Many species that had died out or were barely hanging on elsewhere survived on the island: the Tasmanian devil, the spotted-tailed quoll, the long-nosed potoroo. The idea that Tasmania could still be a haven for the thylacine was tantalizing.

  “So do you want to go to Tasmania?” we asked again.

  “Sure, as long as I can paint some fucked-up critters.” Then he added, “And I'll have to be able to get some pot.”

  Our decision to go to Tasmania was made in the spring—the Northern Hemisphere spring. Since we wanted to go to Tasmania in the summer, we would have to wait for our winter—December, January, February. That gave us plenty of time to think about the tiger.

  What was the likelihood that the thylacine survived, we wondered? It depended upon who we talked to and what we read.

  Most scientists were fairly emphatic that the tiger's time had passed. But occasionally studies came out suggesting the tiger might have eluded searchers. Tasmania's rugged, mountainous terrain and highly varied habitats would serve to protect an animal like the thylacine. About one third of Tasmania's land was protected in national parks. If it still existed, there were places for the thylacine to hide and game for it to hunt.

  On the survival side were people who had devoted their lives to finding the thylacine. They searched areas where there had been credible sightings, looking for evidence such as tracks and animal scat. We knew that the Museum of Natural History in New York had received packages of carnivore feces from Down Under, with requests that the scats be analyzed for possible thylacine DNA. In the survival camp, there were also cryptozoologists. They were a curious group. The word “cryptozoology” means the study of hidden animals. And it applies to the search for the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, as well as to the discovery of real species. Cryptozoology claimed such animals as the African okapi, the pygmy hippo, the Vu Quang ox of Vietnam, even the giant panda and mountain gorilla as successes—all creatures whose existence had been scoffed at until they were discovered in the twentieth century. Cryptozoologists had taken the thylacine into their stable of real and imagined creatures, refusing to believe in its extinction.

  We also researched Tasmania itself. Our almanac said it was 26,383 square miles (about the size of Ireland or West Virginia). Its population was 472,610. Beyond that our knowledge of Tasmania was appallingly limited. For one thi
ng, we were happy to find out that English was spoken on the island. And not only that but it was part of Australia. When we talked to Tasmanians on the phone, we discovered they had a softened, lilting version of the famous Aussie twang.

  In addition we researched the other animals that lived in Tasmania. Though the tiger might be gone or hiding, these creatures were equally odd and amazing, and we planned to see as many as possible. We also determined to visit the Australian mainland. The thylacine had a history there—and possibly a future if the cloning experts had any success. We purchased plane tickets for Sydney, Australia's oldest and largest city, and arranged for ferry passage to Tasmania.

  As for the Tasmanian wilderness, we weren't sure how deep into the bush our investigations would take us. Were there any dangerous animals we needed to worry about? Our research turned up three species of venomous snakes, several vicious stinging ants, and two species of bloodsucking land leeches. Land leeches ?

  Unlike North American leeches, which have the decency to remain in water, Tasmania's leeches lurked in the forest—on plants and shrubs— waiting for a warm snack to wander by. We read about people covered in hundreds of land leeches gorging on their blood. Land leeches became a focal point of our anxieties. We imagined thousands of tiny bloodsucking periscopes twisting in the trees waiting to sense our heat. We read about leech socks, which were essentially pantyhose, and considered the possibility of having to wear black nylons as we traveled through the Tasmanian wilds.

  We went with Alexis to a discount camping store in New Jersey to get supplies. New hiking boots. Water sandals. Backpacks. Flashlights. Polartec pullovers. Waterproof notepads. Australian electrical outlet converters. Socks with “wicking” properties. Lightweight aluminized emergency blankets. Water purification tablets. Afterward, we felt even less prepared than when we had arrived. The store didn't sell leech repellent.

  About a month before the trip, we visited Alexis in his studio again. This time he stopped painting and sat down right next to us.

  “I have something to tell you guys.”

  He's backing out at the last minute!

  “My wife and I are getting separated.”

  “Oh, that's terrible. We're so sorry.”

  There was a pause for sad feelings to sink in.

  Then he said, “Do you mind if I bring a friend on the trip? She would just come for the beginning part on the mainland.”

  “Uh—” The friend in question, Dorothy Spears, was a beautiful and wealthy art journalist—also recently separated—who had a penchant for wearing skintight leopard-print pants. Usually she vacationed in Majorca, the Greek islands, and the Hamptons.

  We asked Alexis if she had ever encountered anything like a land leech. “Other than me?” he said. “Not that I know of.”

  In the remaining time before we left, we contacted all sorts of tiger experts via phone and e-mail, setting up future appointments and getting the lowdown on what to expect. One person we talked with was Nick Mooney, an officer with the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service who had been involved in official searches for the tiger for twenty years. When we reached him, he was out somewhere in the Tasmanian bush and his cell phone kept cutting out. Although Nick couldn't deny the possibility of the tiger's survival, he didn't think it very likely. That said, the thylacine was terribly important to Tasmanian culture. The tiger was Tasmania's bald eagle, its grizzly bear, and timber wolf, all rolled into one. If we dreamed about the thylacine, we could only imagine the dreams Tasmanians had. Later, Nick e-mailed us with a list of people to meet on the island.

  As the day of our departure approached, we put everything in order. We assembled our research materials: field guides, articles, accounts of the island written by early explorers and naturalists. Alexis put together a case full of paintbrushes, drawing paper, and chemical solutions for mixing his own pigments. Because we were traveling on separate flights, we agreed to rendezvous with Alexis and Dorothy in Sydney. That was where we would begin our search for traces of the tiger.

  Shortly before we left, Alexis informed us another friend of his might be joining us in Tasmania. This time, we prayed it would be someone use-ful—an entomologist or DNA expert.

  “He's a world traveler,” Alexis said. “He just likes exotic adventures.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “I met him about a month ago at a dinner party.”

  We were starting to lose control of this tiger.

  2. ROCK ART

  When we arrived in Sydney we dropped our bags at a hotel in the business district and set off on our first expedition—to the State Library of New South Wales. We spent many hours there, looking at old documents and folios, trying to get to know our quarry—its habits and history. In Sydney, we would be looking at the thy-lacine's distant past and possible future. But in Tasmania, who knew? We had only a week before leaving for the island and wanted to be prepared for anything. In one old account at the library, it was claimed that if you grabbed the thylacine by its stiff tail, it wouldn't be able to turn around and bite you. Another old bushie wrote that the tiger could be tied up, but never tamed. We wondered if this information would ever come in handy.

  Taking a break from our research, we sat with Alexis and Dorothy at the city's Royal Botanic Gardens, having tea with scones and observing a bird. A big white ibis with a thin, curving beak flapped up onto a café table, gobbled up some crumbs, and then dipped the tip of its foot-long beak into a pot of clotted cream. Suddenly a woman shrieked. “Oh, shooo! Shoooooo!” The ibis flapped down to the ground and began strolling along on stiltlike gray legs. A few seconds later, it sidled up alongside another table and began probing the interior of another pa-tron's pocketbook with its cream-smeared beak.

  Alexis was delighted by the bird's bad behavior. “That bird needs handcuffs,” he said. We hadn't even gotten as far as Tasmania and the wildlife was already bizarre.

  Exotic ibises wandered Sydney's streets like pigeons, cadging freebies and putting their beaks where they didn't belong. But they were just the beginning of the city's strange animals. The night before, we had been standing outside an oyster bar in Kings Cross—Sydney's version of Times Square—and a huge creature had flown toward us, circled, and then landed with a thump in a small street tree. It hung there like a gremlin, its leathery wings folded, and chattered spookily. For a moment, we were petrified. Was this some sort of supernatural being? When we mustered the courage to look at it more closely, we realized it was a flying fox. A megabat.

  At the Royal Botanic Gardens, we had a chance to observe these big bats as intently as we liked. The gardens were home to a roosting colony of about five thousand gray-headed flying foxes. Walking along the greenerylined pathways, we followed the sounds of screeching and squawking until we stood before a grove of palm trees laden with what looked like giant pods twisting in the hot breeze. Hanging upside down by their claws, the flying foxes were the size of cats. Though most were sleeping, a few were unusually active, using hooklike fingers on the edges of their wings to climb like monkeys from branch to branch. Through binoculars we could see their gray-furred, intelligent-looking faces and a ruff of red fur around their necks. Beneath the trees, the walkways were coated with a yellowish slime—bat scat—that threw off a sweet decaying scent.

  Dorothy and Alexis walked arm in arm down a path bursting with tropical blooms beneath the bat camp, seemingly blissfully unaware of the perils both above and below. They were a strange pair. Alexis had been wearing the same gray shorts and Timberland T-shirt for forty-eight hours whereas Dorothy was decked out for a romantic vacation and had made several wardrobe changes each day. At present, she was wearing a low-cut strawberry print sundress, open-toed sandals, and Gucci sunglasses.

  “Watch out for the bat guano,” we yelled.

  “It's not guano,” Alexis said. “Bat guano is produced by insect-eating bats.” These bats ate fruit.

  “Well, watch out for the shit.” He was steering Dorothy perilously clos
e to a section of the path occasionally hit by a rain of yellow goo. “Eeew,” said Dorothy, looking down at the bat slime, which was chunky with fig seeds. “Yuck.”

  We had only been in Sydney for a few days and Alexis had already invited Dorothy to extend her stay for a week and come to Tasmania with us. We were concerned she wasn't properly prepared and wondered if in addition to sliplike dresses and strappy shoes, she had brought any bush gear. Long pants, hiking boots, sweatshirts, that sort of thing?

  Dorothy seemed blithely unconcerned. “You guys are so funny,” she said when we asked if she had packed any sneakers or walking shoes. Her plan was to buy whatever she needed along the way.

  We went back to watching the bats. They chattered and quarreled and muscled each other for roosting positions. Occasionally, one would circle down from the bright sky and hit a branch hard, causing it to bend low with its weight.

  “This could only be better if we were high,” said Alexis. He cleared his throat. “Any news on my pot?” This was the third time he had asked in an hour.