At Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart
Stars shimmer above the fragile silence of the zoo night. The thylacine has grown tired. Tired of the passing of wooden bars, of the suffocating lattice of close-meshed wire. Tired of the weight of her existence. Hesitantly, she sinks onto the ice-cold, cracked concrete. So tired!
Only faintly does her brown, slender body rise from the blackness of the night. The nineteen stripes upon her back vanish entirely into the darkness. Never to rise again, never to walk again.
A cool gust of wind sets the branches of the nearby tree dancing. Nature is still out there, and yet has become unreachable. Another breeze reaches the cage and brushes gently over the fur of the endling. As the wind touches the dry muzzle and delicate vibrissae of the shivering thylacine, it carries word of the Tasmanian spring, already drawing near.
With the bitter scent of fresh buds in her nose, she closes her burning eyes. She thinks of dense forests, wide fields, the endless sky above her. And, at the very end, of the feeling inside her mother’s warm pouch, though she holds no memory of it.
She does not know it, but she is the last of her kind. One final breath falls into infinity. For a brief moment, withered leaves tremble on the ground before her; one last warm wind reaches the cold world.
