Carnivorous Nights by Margaret Mittelbach Page B

“Smithton peppermint gums,” he said. There were also dark, thick-trunked wattle trees called blackwoods with heavy spreading branches covered in long green leaves. “Very good for making furniture,” Dulcie commented.
    As we drove, we passed a tract of forestland. Something terrible had happened: the land was a black hole of uprooted tree stumps, gouged earth, and small scattered limbs. It looked like it had been bombed.
    “What happened?” we asked.
    “It's a clear-fell,” Geoff said. “It's crown land—it belongs to the government. They're wood chipping it for export to Japan. The wood chips are used for making paper.” He pointed out a few remaining piles ofbranches, broken logs, and brush. “They pushed those together to be burned.”
    “This was always my favorite road,” his mother added sadly. “We would drive cattle down here through these lovely trees and listen to the birdsong.”
    At the bottom of the hill, Geoff opened a gate in a wire fence and drove into a green pasture filled with Dulcie's cows. Geoff made a bellowing noise and dozens of Black Anguses and brown-and-white Herefords began following the Pajero.
    Most of this grazing land, he said, had been painstakingly cleared by hand by the early settlers. There had always been a history of logging and land clearing in the Northwest. But that was when trees were felled by determined men using axes and double-handed crosscut saws. “A lot of Tasmanians were in these isolated areas, and they would chip away at the land year after year.” These days logging had a more industrial quality. The logging companies used chainsaws, bulldozers, mechanical log loaders, and excavators. After clear-cutting a parcel of forest, they would torch the land, burning off the remaining debris. It didn't seem to matter if the local community was opposed to a forest being cut down. The government had a quota system—a certain amount of public forest could be chopped each year, including a certain percentage of old-growth forest. Now, the logging companies were chopping the trees as fast as they could. Geoff said it was as if they had switched the bounty from the thy-lacine's head and put it on the forests.
    By the time we got back to Geoff's house, the other members of Team Thylacine had already arrived. Chris was playing with Scratch, while Alexis and Dorothy were leaning against the hood of Chris's car. They looked sleek and tanned from their day at the beach.
    Geoff looked relieved. “Well, this isn't too bad,” he whispered, glancing sideways at Alexis. “I've never met a New York artist before. I was expecting a seedy character with a goatee and leather pants. These people look relatively normal.”
    Everyone shook hands, and Chris presented Geoff with four bottles of wine.
    “Welcome to the Northwest,” said Geoff.
    “The roadkill here is unbelievable,” Alexis said as if he were raving about the quality of the local tomatoes.
    Dorothy made a face. “He made us stop to photograph them all.”
    We asked Alexis if he had been able to identify any of the creatures.
    “No, but they all had a marsupial gesture.”
    He got out his digital camera and showed us a rogue's gallery of dead animals.
    “This one's completely flattened,” he said, clicking on a torn-up object we would have taken for a shredded bit of old carpet if there hadn't been bone and muscle protruding. “It must have been run over by one of those logging trucks.”
    He continued to click. “This one's a triptych—it's in three sections. I think it's some sort of kangaroo-like creature. And this one is totally unfamiliar. It's got a furry tail though. Any ideas about this one, Geoff ?”
    Geoff had a look. “Hard to say, really.”
    Alexis clicked through a couple more portraits. Then he put down his camera. “What about tigers, Geoff ? Have there been any tiger roadkills?”
    “None that have been documented.”
    In a place suffused with flattened fauna, the absence of a single,