When I see reports of Nessie,

Bigfoot, Yetis et al,

being sighted, I dismiss them as not so, but one of these mythical beasts that always takes my attention is the story and/or sightings of a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, strangely enough only a few night ago we were both talking of one, when today I noticed this article about them in The New Yorker, 

and here is the last one, in the flesh, so to speak, if you have time grab a coffee or two, the article above is a great read if like me you like to think the tigers are still out there, and if you are really serious, here is a sighting of one, 

they were hunted to protect livestock; in fact, the government paid for every tiger killed up until 1909, but then something unexpected happened, long after the accepted date of extinction, Tasmanians kept reporting that they’d seen the animal, there were hundreds of officially recorded sightings, plus many more that remained unofficial, spanning decades, tigers were said to dart across roads, hopping “like a dog with sore feet,” or to follow people walking in the bush, yipping, a hotel housekeeper named Deb Flowers told me that, as a child, in the nineteen-sixties, she spent a day by the Arm River watching a whole den of striped animals with her grandfather, learning only later, in school, that they were considered extinct, 

in 1982, an experienced park ranger, doing surveys near the northwest coast, reported seeing a tiger in the beam of his flashlight; he even had time to count the stripes (there were twelve), “10 A.M. in the morning in broad daylight in short grass,” a man remembered, describing how he and his brother startled a tiger in the nineteen-eighties while hunting rabbits, “We were just sitting there with our guns down and our mouths open.” Once, two separate carloads of people, eight witnesses in all, said that they’d got a close look at a tiger so reluctant to clear the road that they eventually had to drive around it, another man recalled the time, in 1996, when his wife came home white-faced and wide-eyed. “I’ve seen something I shouldn’t have seen,” she said,

“Did you see a murder?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “I’ve seen a tiger.”

the last known thylacine in the wild was shot in 1930, and the last one in a zoo died in 1936, just 2 months before, in a classic case of, ‘we should have done this earlier’ the Australian government designated it as a protected species, but the question still remains, are they still out there?