A Tasmanian devil that escaped from a Gold Coast wildlife park is still on the loose, with CCTV footage showing the young marsupial wandering the grounds in the early hours of the morning it escaped.
The two-year-old devil, named Mary, was spotted on camera roaming Paradise Country in Oxenford at around 4am on Tuesday, about three hours before staff noticed she was missing during routine morning checks.
Greg Irons, director of the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary in Hobart, said he feels for the park but reckons Mary will be fine either way.
“It’ll be the most tanned devil in Australia,” he told Pulse.
“From the devil’s perspective, it’ll actually probably be fine.”
“It’ll probably live out its days there, no problems [if not found].”
He said if Mary wasn’t found, to his knowledge it would be the only devil in the wild on the mainland.
“It’d be like the old stories about the panther running around Sydney … but it’ll be a bit different. It might be a miniature panther in a Collingwood jersey,” he said.
Irons said the best bet for recapturing Mary would be simple food-baited traps, because devils are driven by their stomachs.
“The thing is with devils is that they’re very food motivated,” he said.
“We caught a couple recently on the east coast that were injured, and we set 13 traps and got ’em both on the same night.”
He said a captive devil like Mary likely had a full feed before escaping and may have bedded down somewhere close by.
“If they set traps, you know, there’s a good chance it’ll bumble into one of those when it’s hungry again,” he said.
Irons warned that dogs and roads are the biggest dangers to a loose devil, particularly if the animal is drawn to roadkill or dog food left outside homes.
On the question of how Mary escaped her secure indoor quarantine habitat, Irons was sceptical of the park’s theory of an extraordinary leap.
He offered to review photos or videos of the enclosure if the park needed help working it out.
Irons said the escape poses no real threat to the local environment and it was unfortunately quite common for animals to escape enclosures.
“I think everywhere’s had somewhere, something get out,” he said.
Mary is one of two Tasmanian devils that recently arrived at Paradise Country.
The park closed its gates to search for her but has since reopened as the search continues.
