I Saw Nothing: The Extinction Of The Thylacine

Description

Rosie never liked Elias Churchill, and she liked him even less when he trapped the last tiger-wolf ever to be seen. Churchill didn’t kill the tiger-wolf for its bounty – he bundled it into a cage, scratched and bloody, and sent it by train to some unknown place. It was moaning and sad. It liked its freedom, Rosie could tell, just as much as her father had, before he died in the bush after being trapped under a log for three days. Then Rosie and her mother had to move to Hobart to work, but it was the Depression and it was hard, especially if you’re from the country.

Thylacine was the proper name for a tiger-wolf, according to Alison Reid, the lady at Hobart Zoo whose father had died too. She said that this one may be the last in existence. It was Rosie’s thylacine! The very one she saw that day on the train. But on September 7, 1936, it died. Was Rosie the last person to see the thylacine alive and free in the wild? Could she have done anything to save it being captured, saving all thylacines from extinction?