The Tassie devils in my neighbourhood keep stealing shoes and laundry, but I adore them | Kelley Swain

To have your knickers go missing at a music festival may be seen as evidence of having a great time, but what if you’re at a folk music festival in the lush green Huon Valley of Tasmania, where parents stroll around with children in prams, and the wildest thing happening is an 8pm ceilidh?

The thing is, I’m fortunate to live in that lush green valley, but my neighbours are inveterate kleptomaniacs. A guest who was visiting for the Cygnet folk festival this summer had left some laundry out on my landlady’s deck to dry in the sun, and as my landlady turned the corner, she saw the pair of knickers disappearing slowly between the wooden deck slats. She dived to rescue the knickers; the thief scuttled away beneath the deck. I learned early on that leaving shoes out at night was to kiss your shoes goodbye.

(And in the day, the landlady’s dog will steal your shoes, so they aren’t safe day or night.)

The thing is, I adore my neighbours. Tassie devils have a penchant for non-compliance and their preferred method of communication is bloodcurdling screams. Now that I’m in my 40s, I can relate.

Sarcophilus harrisii, or “Harris’s flesh-lover”, are the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial, and they bear zero resemblance to Taz, the spinning tornado of a cartoon I grew up watching.

As a person who was born in North America, my nearest mental image is “small bear”, in the way the body moves – somewhat lumbering and by all appearances not very flexible. A pit bull may be more accurate to imagine the size and strength of these little creatures, but their jaw strength, as I learned recently at the Tasmanian Devil Unzoo, is that of four pit bulls. And they lumber, or bound, because their heads are so heavy that their hind legs have evolved to be short: they are top-heavy, and would simply fall on their faces if the hind end didn’t compensate.

It was moderately hopeful to learn that, though the populations of devils have been decimated by facial tumour disease, there are protected populations on both the Tasman Peninsula and Maria Island: each of these populations, while small, are free of the disease, and there is thought to be enough genetic variation to keep these populations healthy. However, despite conservation gains, they are still classified as endangered.

Last year, it was a delight to peek out from my tiny house window and see a young devil right in the driveway. It was dusk, and the little creature was young and fearless enough to pause before it dived beneath the deck. It was cute as a puppy, but I wouldn’t try to get closer than that, because I value my hands, and their bite force can amputate bone.

Upon first landing in Tasmania, I remember reading an oldish novel where the terrifying monster in the basement was a Tasmanian devil, and now that I’ve seen them, I think the author had probably never been to this island, because the creature in the darkness was far larger and more terrifying than these little imps. Imp is actually the name for a young devil. Accurate.

The thievery of these little creatures is endlessly amusing to me, but there have been, I’m told, a few rounds of inconvenience. Expensive hiking boots have had to be hauled out from beneath the house with a boat hook: with them came cushions from deck chairs that had come from neighbours down the road, and linens that could have made up a picnic.

I once read that devils had stolen something like 40 polar fleeces on Maria Island and stashed them in a great nest beneath the old Penitentiary buildings, but now I can’t find that story and wonder if I’ve made it up – or perhaps someone else did. Headlines say “stealing chocolate”, “stealing dog toys” and “stealing hiking boots”.

Only a few weeks ago, as I was heading into my house after dark, a rumble came from the hedge, about a metre away. If you’ve ever had the frustrated joy of starting up a small lawn mower, the kind where you have to yank a handle on a string, where it goes ruMMM-Rumm, before it actually catches and starts up: that was the song of the critter in the hedge. One of the Unzoo keepers suggested it may have been a quoll rather than a devil. It is a busy hedge, and as my landlady graciously says of this hill: “We are but the latest inhabitants.”