Finally. It was about time. Alas not a wild one. They are just too rare and shy. That is why the Devils@Cradle sanctuary works together with the government and other similar institutions to create a backup population. In case the wild one doesn’t make it. In case the Devil Facial Tumour Disease finds not a single resistant individuum. There are some on Tassie’s west coast, apparently, which seem to be able to live with the lethal cancer longer than their eastern cousins. But, ‘not enough biological diversity and too much hunting by the first Europeans’, explains the passionate Devil keeper, while opening the gate to a large shoulder-high fenced-off enclosure and picks up one of the fours teenage devils by its neck and places it gently in her arms. Like a baby. Or a puppy. And similar to a canine, the carnivorous marsupial curiously sniffs along her arm and over her shoulder to the complete delight of the twenty-odd visitors of the park. Quickly, cameras are taken from their bags, phones unlocked to catch this rare moment on film of being only half a meter away from the animal with the strongest jaw. Percentage-wise, of course. They grow after all only up to ninety centimetres tall. Still bigger than most anticipate, considering the difficulty of finding them in the wild. She raised this one by hand, the caretaker tells us. Devils can have up to a hundred babies at once, but being a marsupial, they are tiny, as big as a rice corn, when they have to find their way into the pouch; and mostly only half a dozen survive. Then there is the cancer, the roadkill and introduced species like cats, that reduce a Devil’s lifespan significantly. It’s all quite sad. This one made it though, as well as its three siblings who by now scratch jealously on the wooden gate. They all want Mama’s attention. For another few months, until they fully grow up. Then they will hopefully be more interested in the opposite gender, and the males get to go on a journey to other similar institutions to find them a proper, genetically divers, girlfriend. They will never experience the wild though. It’s too risky for them, being used to humans and sheltered from all the dangers. Instead for the rest of their life, which really is just half a dozen years, the drawback of a powerful, literally bone-crushing metabolism, they will live under the watchful eyes of researchers, caretakers and curious visitors. Perhaps preferable to the treatment they got from the early Europeans, who got so scared of their calls and cries that not only they drew the comparison to the eternal evil, but also relinquished them mercilessly. It didn’t help that the scavenging pitch-black creatures, just distinguishable by the few unique white stripes along their chests and backs, were frequently found devouring whole cattle carcasses, wrongly accusing them of hunting down livestock. Yet another time when the lack of knowledge brought yet another species to the brink of extinction. The teenage devil, by now sleeping peacefully in his Mama’s arms, knows nothing of this though. He’s just happy to have food, some playmates and countless people that adore him just for who he is.