Thylacine

“Could I have something soft to lie on, like a piece of grass maybe? It’s just that this… the hard stuff in this cage is cold at night. I’m sorry to complain but it’s getting harder every night to hang on.” I thought I would try once more to get through to these strange, pale upright creatures but they just don’t seem to understand what I’m saying. Ever since they arrived in Tasmania they’ve chased and run-down and murdered my kind and we haven’t been able to talk to them.

When I was a joey I had a friend who was one of the darker uprights. They’re gone too and I miss them. Though they hunted they never bothered us and were always willing to exchange useful information if not outright chat away about the nonsense of the day. My dark upright friend was particularly funny, and we’d laugh beneath the stars on a cool summer night, the wind blowing through our fur on the high knoll above the bay.

But she is gone. I believe she was a female upright though she always had some kind of cover over herself, and I couldn’t be totally sure, upright biology isn’t my area of expertise. Now these pale, angry animals have captured me and taken away any hope that I might yet find another of my own kind by locking me up behind this cold, hard angry fence. At least the kinder one with the broom feeds me but he can’t understand what I’m saying to him any better than the other pales ones.

The last time I saw my upright friend I asked her about the pale ones. “Why do they come after us so often? We don’t bother them, and we’ll keep the rodent population down for them.” I sat back and scratched my flank where my stripes fade into the tawny fur of my belly.

“They come from some world far away from here and bring their confused way of doing things. They change everything in their path and won’t go to the Dreamtime with us. My people find it very hard to communicate with them, much harder than with the other animals from right here. They seem to not be able to see and hear reality. It’s strange but they only understand today and a short distance into the future. I think they see life like it’s a straight line from one place to another and you must snatch everything you pass along the way no matter who is using it and what it’s for. Believe me, they like us even less than they like you, maybe because we look more like them and it makes them afraid of what they’re not understanding.” She pulled a grub from a shrub tree beside her and munched on it.

Looking away from her and toward the lights from their settlement I said, “They seem even sadder than they make me feel. I don’t understand their purpose here.” Wanting to change the subject I rolled in the long grass of the hill and stared up at the sky. She said nothing more and we sat in happy silence for a long time after, bellies full and no pale uprights in sight.

And that was the last time I saw her. I’d already left my parents’ nest days before to go searching for a place and a mate of my own, so later that night I woke and wandered down the hill and off in a new direction through a forest I’d never before travelled. I searched long and hard through valleys and over scrubland. I saw many strange sights but never another one of my kind. The pale uprights' settlements seemed to be everywhere and growing like ferns along a riverbank. Many farms teemed with their animals and sometimes I had to resort to stealing the noisy birds they kept. There were simply not enough wild creatures left to feed on and well…, I’m a carnivore after all!

I was captured in a pit dug by some of the pale ones and taken to this place; Hobart Zoo they seem to call it. There are other kinds of creatures, but they’ve never brought another of my kind and I’ve been lonely. The feeder talks to me, but I can’t understand him anymore than he understands what I’m trying to say to him. Once I saw another of the darker uprights in the distance but he was gone so fast; they seemed to shoo him away, that I had no time to call to him for help. He didn’t know me and wasn’t from my home territory so I doubt he would have helped me. He seemed feeble and unable to help even himself though.

Now I wait for the feeder to give me my daily food but it’s getting dark, and he may have forgotten about me. It will be even colder tonight in this empty, lonely place. I hope I can make it until tomorrow.