Animal Alphabet: Q is for Quoll (and Quetzal, too)

As it turns out, I have a drawing several years old that would work fine for this week's installment of the Animal Alphabet. I've colored it for the occasion.



That's from my abecedary entry into the "______ Are Always Fun to Draw" project from a few years ago that was, incidentally, my first introduction to the Animal Alphabet's deacon, Ben Towle. Maybe now would be a good time to mention that you can get that alphabet, plus another one with Medieval folk, in convenient micro-minicomic form, via this link.

If you're reading this and you've been contributing regularly to the Animal Alphabet, drop me a line via email (it's in my Blogger profile), and I'll send you those two little ABCs for free, just as my way to say how much fun I've been having as a contributor to the project.

Now, I like my quetzal drawing, and it was (as promised) fun to draw, way back when. But I didn't think it would be right to rest on my laurels this week, especially with so many Scrabble players checking this week's entries for ways to use their Qs.

And so, let me also present to you the largest living* marsupial predator in mainland Australia, and the second-largest living marsupial predator of all:



That's a tiger quoll. There are several species of quoll, all living in relatively small areas of Australia or New Guinea. They're about the size of housecats, I think, though the tiger quoll is the biggest of the bunch.

If you're wondering who the largest marsupial predator is (by weight), then please allow him to introduce himself.

I don't think my drawing actually does a good job of capturing the quoll's personality — its quollities, if you will. My initial doodles might actually have been a bit more quollified for that task.



And I kept wondering, as I thought about the quoll this week, why it starts with a Q instead of a K. There are, as I mentioned before, lots of antipodean animals whose names kick off with a K.



Have you kids met Keanu?

Why a quoll and not a kwall? Why a quokka, not a kwokka? Who can explain orthographical orthopraxis? Ah, alas.


*Speaking of "alas," the qualifier "living" has to appear in my lists of marsupial predators because of the almost certain demise, in the last century, of the thylacine, a.k.a. the Tasmanian wolf or the Tasmanian tiger. It lived long enough to be photographed, but not long enough for me to meet it. [Sadface emoticon here.]