The Devil's in the DNA

Readers of this blog will know that I have a colleague in Tasmania.  Not content with literally dialling her work in she is also a part time garlic farmer, cow whisperer and this blog's roving reporter with special responsibility for cows, Tasmania, garlic and jellyfish (that last one's a bit of a mystery).  In addition to all of the above she has contrived to procure for herself a family including the full complement of husband, children and at least one sibling.

Now she has turned her hand to inventing.  She is in the process of creating an automatic weed matting dispenser for the garlic crop.  There are such things on the market of course.  Unfortunately as the term "on the market" indicates, they cost money.  So my colleague is going to make her own.  What could possibly go wrong?  The last time I called her she was tangled up in eighty seven metres of plastic netting while an automatic hole puncher was hurling cloves of garlic through the air like bullets.  Her family and Mr Moo the cow who were amused spectators to this occurrence were last seen hiding behind a water drum while garlic cloves hummed and whined over their heads.

 In keeping with the theme of overachievement that seems prevalent in their family my colleague's sister is currently backing up her degree in economics by studying genetics.   When she isn't raising her children or breeding supersoldiers for the army she drops in on Tasmania for the occasional visit.  While my colleague is engaged in a life or death struggle with recalcitrant plastic her sister is busy roaming the highways of Tasmania with a shovel.

As I believe I may have mentioned before Tasmania is home to a modest sized marsupial of such ferocious looking ugliness that it is called the Tasmanian Devil.  If you want to spot a devil just drive down a country road in Tasmania (which is most of them).  You see that nasty smear on the bitumen?  That's a Tasmanian devil or it was sometime prior to the impact.

Apart from having truly dreadful traffic awareness the Tasmanian devils have a problem.  There has been an outbreak of some sort of cancer type disease which has been chopping its way through devil populations all over the state.  Nobody seems to know quite what to do about it.  Research is being undertaken by various people to see if we can come up with a cure so that devils can once again be run over by cars in perfect safety.  What would be really helpful for the researchers is to have a supply of devil DNA unfortunately there is a problem.  That problem is the Tasmanian government which, having cut a deal with certain universities, is now less than enthusiastic about allowing anybody else to get their hands on bits of devil.

Now, I would never encourage illegal behaviour either in this blog or the real world so all I will say is that if you drive down rural roads in Tasmania with a shovel and a cardboard box then with a little effort you can fill that box with something that certain researchers on the mainland may well pay good money for and along the way you might help save an ugly looking, vicious tempered overgrown rodent from extinction if that's the sort of thing that floats your boat.

My colleague could probably give you more details but the last I'd heard from her she had been planted underneath a length of weed matting with garlic cloves up her nostrils.