well, the time had finally come and with all the preliminaries now out of the way (wombats wobbled, koalas kuddled, emus embraced, kangaroos kicked and bush tucker and billy tea devoured), our guide was now prepared to lead us to the devil....the tasmanian devil that is. having grown up with images of the warner brother's cartoon character of the tasmanian devil in my mind, i was not really sure what to expect when i finally had a chance to come face to face with one of these little beasts. actually, face to needle-sharp tooth-filled muzzle is perhaps the more appropriate expression.

our first stop was an enclosure that held two, somewhat shy, and not overly energetic little devils. it turned out that these two little fellows were orphans whose mother had been on the losing side of an encounter with a car. it seems that tasmanian devils have absolutely no road sense at all and since their prime source of food is roadkill, they quite often find themselves on the same plate as their meal. thankfully for these little two creatures, the driver of the car had the compassion and anatomical smarts to take a look inside the pouch of the dead mother devil (being a marsupial like kangaroos, they carry their young around in a pouch - more on this later) and found these fellows and brought them to the bonorong park which serves as a sort of orphanage for any displaced animal with killer claws. speaking of pouches, kangaroos and most other marsupials have pouches that open upwards or towards the face of the mother. tasmanian devils on the other hand, have pouches that open to the rear. the explanation seems to be that since the devils rummage through all sorts of dead things, rubbish, bush, dirt and god only knows what else in their search for carrior to eat, this placement of the pouch prevents it from getting filled with all this junk. another reason why the tasmanian devils might have such an 'attitude' involves what these little buggers have to go through just to survive childhood. i learned from our guide that the female tasmanian devil generally has up to 14 tiny little babies at a time. however, there are only 4 'feeding stations' for the little ones inside the pouch. obviously, only the 4 meanest, nastiest, and strongest little devils will survive. to make matters worse, devils are famous for eating their own, so woe be the baby that falls out of the pouch.

with that introduction, we were then led off to a pen that held a fully grown, fully attitude enhanced bundle of nasty. this little guy looked liked a furry cannonball with legs on the bottom and a mouth that was filled with rows of the sharpest, slimiest most fear- provoking teeth that i have ever seen. add to that the devil's penchant for emitting a cross between a hiss/roar/rattle and hum noise when it doesn't want anything else on the same planet as it is on, no wonder they have gotten the reputation they have. our guide pulled out a little plastic tub that was filled with little dismembered pieces of rabbit that was just what the devil just waiting for. this little guy literally jumped on the guide's leg and i swear would have crawled up to his face if he hadn't given it a piece of rabbit when he did. the devil took the meat, ran off under a log, began hissing and crunching bones and within a minute was back demanding more. this went on for a few more cycles until the guide realized that there was no more rabbit to assuage the devil with and he beat a hasty retreat.

the group moved on towards another section of the park while i noticed another little enclosure off to the side. looking over the waist-high wall i saw one medium sized devil sitting rather peacefully. when he spied me, he slowly starting moving my way. quickly putting my eye to the camera and trying to catch the devil at just the right moment, i was frustrated because he kept getting closer and closer. and then just as i thought i had the perfect shot and started to depress the shutter, the camera was nearly ripped from my hand. the little devil had grabbed the camera's strap that had been hanging down into the pen. a furious battle of tug of war ensued, all the while i was snapping the shutter. much to my chagrin, this little guy was joined by one of his buddies and now it was me against two royally ticked off tasmanian devils. after what seemed like ages, they either tired of the 'game' or decided that i wasn;t sufficiently dead to be worth their attention any longer. they let go, smiled/smirked/snarled (?) at me and went back to doing whatever they were doing when i came along.

i rejoined the group just as the sun was setting behind the mountains in the distance and saw what looked like an ideal photo opportunity. i climbed a hill, lifted the camera and tried to capture the setting sun silhouetting a group of kangaroos in the foreground. however, the angle wasn't quite right so i had to sink lower towards the ground. still not satisfied, i finally decided to lay down on the ground, put my head as close to the hill as i could and get the shot. if you look closely at the resulting picture (on the left) you will notice many not so little round black objects scattered across the hillside. put several hundred kanagaroos together with more than ample food for any period of time and what do you have? roo poo! i now have a very 'up close and personal' souvenir of my visit to bonorong park.