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line and tried to drag it through a hole into the house’s foundations. They managed to get most of it in before it burst, showering the foundations with feathers. Mooney recalls wet black noses with white feathers stuck on them, and plenty of devil sneezing. He bought the owner a new doona.
    During 2004, David Pemberton and his partner Rosemary Gales hand-reared two devils, Donny and Clyde, who made their den under a bed in a spare room. They regularly took items of newly washed clothing to the den. By the time Donny and Clyde were moved to the wild, they had lined their den with the equivalent of three basket-loads of clean washing.
    A fact that could be mistaken for a myth is the tendency of devils to all go to the toilet in the same spot. The use of communal latrines is not common among animals. Hyaenas and ratels (honey badgers), two other species associated with the devil through convergent evolution, also use communal latrines. They are instances of an apparently solitary animal engaging in at least chemical social interaction. Depending on population numbers, dozens of devils will defecate in one area—usually near a creek crossing or other water source—for reasons of communication barely understood, and further calling into question the ‘solitary’ tag. The same spot will be reused by a devil after an absence of a week or more, which implies a form of territoriality. Devil latrines could be described as community noticeboards; they may tell transients that a particular area is full, and they may tell competing males something about female availability. They may even have an inter-species communication function: spotted-tailed quoll scats have been found at devil latrines.
    Nick and Kate Mooney have hand-reared many orphaned devils for rehabilitation and have little difficulty toilet-training them because of the innate behavioural tendency to use one latrine.
    Devil scats are huge and in them, as befits an unfussy feeder, are to be found a great variety of objects. So big are they relative to the animal’s size that they have often been cited as evidence of the continued existence of thylacines. An average scat is about 15 centimetres long, but they can be up to 25 centimetres long.
    Baby and juvenile devils are cute, playful, mischievous—and noisy, especially during the night. They climb whatever they can and play games which involve ambushing, chasing and dragging one another by the ear. David Pemberton, while rearing orphans, has observed that juvenile devils use their tails to send a range of excitable and nervous signals, with the tail bent stiffly toward the ground and twitching energetically. (Raised tails in most animals are generally considered the demonstration of a highly excitable state.)
    Yet devils would not make good pets. Even little ones have formidably sharp teeth and vice-like jaws. Above all, once weaned they become asocial, which is surely why Aborigines, who quickly took to dogs after European settlement, did not keep them as pets. This hasn’t prevented some Australian scientists suggesting that endangered marsupials be tested as pets, with a view to breeding them up. A report on ABC Radio’s PM program began with host Mark Colvin introducing the topic this way: ‘Imagine curling up in front of a winter fire with a Tasmanian devil at your feet, or an eastern quoll on your lap . . .’ 27 Having said this hand-reared devils do like their comfort— some of the Mooneys’ winter orphans would gather at the fireplace and wait for the fire to be lit.
    Their protected status has not prevented a number of US exotic pet websites advertising devils. The international trade in exotic living things is vast and much of it illegal. It would be surprising if devils didn’t form part of it, because they would sell handsomely, thanks in part to the high profile of the Warner Bros. cartoon character Taz. They are easy to catch, feed and house. But