Contrary to my blog on shooting these poor blighters (you will recall, I didn’t actually end up killing any!) I have since had a far more personable and friendly encounter with this country’s national emblem, as the following picture elucidates. There, I gave them some food, surely all is forgiven…
As I found out on a recent trip to Tasmania, Tasmanian Devils are vicious, noisy buggers – but they’re awesome! My observation of these little terrors is confirmed by the following clip of them I found on t’interweb:
See? Check out how it’s cracking into that animal’s head. Did you get the sound working? Hear how much noise they were making too? Just imagine being an early Australian explorer stuck in the bush camped out in a little tent listening to the sound of packs of those creatures tucking into a newly acquired piece of meat. Then imagine poking your head outside and seeing their red ears glowing in the moonlight…
Was there ever an animal more appropriately named? I suppose hedgehog is a pretty good one, and the great white shark is similarly aptly named, come to think of it seahorse is not bad too, then there’s the sloth and the blobfish (pictured)… but… well, you get this idea. The Tasmanian Devil’s got to be up there with the best of ‘em. It’s even got the name of where it comes from in there, that’s got to count for something!
Anyway, our lovely guide Sarah did inform us that their bark was worse than their bite, but the facts suggest otherwise. I’m gonna go ahead and bullet point these nice and easy for you:
While Tasmanian devils are generally opportunistic and eat carrion more often than they hunt live prey, they can take prey up to the size of a small kangaroo. That’s not bad for an animal that isn’t really much larger than your bog standard domestic cat.
They can eat up to 40% of their body weight in 30 minutes if the opportunity arises. (Don’t just skim read that, think about it. I reckon I weigh somewhere between 70 and 80 kilograms these days. By that reckoning I’d have to eat 30kg of steak in 30 minutes to equal the Tassy Devil’s record. That’s a kilo of meat a minute. Good job I’m not still a student, I might see that as a challenge…)
An analysis of mammalian bite force relative to body size shows that the devil has the strongest bite of any living mammal: over 5,100 psi. That’s as strong as a crocodile’s bite, and nearly thirteen (count it, thirteen!) times as strong as the bite of a large great white shark.
So there you go. I hope you appreciated those facts because I only wikipedia-d two of them. Ok, so all three really. But I did work out the equivalent great-white-shark-psi-bit myself to put it into context, and the cat thing, and the bit about my weight, I really did. If that’s not getting your money’s worth, I don’t know what is.
So, even though they are quite small creatures, you really wouldn’t want to mess with a Tasmanian Devil. Especially in a pie eating contest. You’d just lose. Fact.
Three may be the magic number for some, but unfortunately this was not the spectacle I was expecting from a trio of great grapes.
Peppery and attractive on the nose I was expecting something fantastic, but on tasting was left with a pleasant but fairly tame experience.
Instead of an evening of fireworks I got an afternoon with a sparkler… with gloves on. Don’t get me wrong, I like sparklers, and I’ll happily play with them for a while, I just don’t see them as the main attraction.
Now this is a HUGE wine. Entirely lacking in subtlety this wine may find its detractors in the same way the next Transformers movie won’t appeal to those after more finesse in their entertainment.
But if you’re after big berry flavours, a nose like a recently felled tree and full, grippy tannins then this is your blockbuster.
Just don’t complain if the dialogue on its way from your tongue to your stomach isn’t all you might have hoped for…
Perth, AUSTRALIA