It was rather odd how many people in our tour group were nervous about feeding the kangaroos. These suckers were so hand-fed I suspect I could have saddled up one of the males and chucked a four-year-old on its back and it wouldn’t have blinked.
The Tasmanian Devils weren’t part of the hand-feeding extravaganza, of course, as their disposition wouldn’t exactly endear them to accepting nibbly treats out of someone’s outstretched palm. The park did, however, have a couple of hand-raised devils they use as part of a feeding demonstration. The devils, a pair of females named Danger and Delilah, are very fond of their handlers, and lap up any amount of attention he gives them. The handler picks one up so that visitors can give her a pat on the back, and as soon as he scooped up the devil, she chomped down on part of his sleeve, closed her eyes, and went blissfully limp. The other devil, meanwhile, had chomped down on his pant cuff and was dragged around the enclosure as the handler made his way among the visitors. Apparently the devils latch on to the handler’s clothes as a sort of happy/security gesture, as they would similarly latch on to their mothers in the wild. It’s a bit like a cat kneading a cushion (or belly, or whatever). And it’s darn cute:
The rest of the day was spent driving to more lovely locations, namely the Bay of Fires and a couple of spectacular waterfalls. There was pastoral countryside and dairy farms galore, and we ended up in Launceston for the evening.
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