By WILL NORTH

Do you know where Tasmania is? Of course you don’t. No one does. Except maybe Tasmanians. It’s like Narnia: a fictional place maybe somewhere on our globe or maybe only in our imagination.  Maybe, like me, you have a vague sense that it’s somewhere south of Australia. But is there anything south of Australia other than the South Pole? I have no idea. I wasn’t that good at geography.

But if you are old enough — which is to say already qualified for Social Security — you may recall (though if you’re that old you probably won’t) that Tasmania is known principally in the United States because of a “Looney Tunes” cartoon character called “Taz,” a Tasmanian devil. Wikipedia describes him as “a ferocious, albeit dim-witted omnivore with a notoriously short temper and little patience. He will eat anything and everything, with an appetite that seems to know no bounds. He is best known for his speech consisting mostly of grunts, growls and rasps, and his ability to spin like a vortex and bite through just about anything.”

This came as a great shock because this is an almost perfect description of my pal at the Burton Coffee Stand, “Bad Michael,” although, so far, he has not bitten me. I cannot speak for other customers. Maybe he has. Maybe it’s all hush-hush, for insurance purposes. And all this time he’s pretended to be nothing more sinister than a rude ex-New Yorker.

But just last week two apparently genuine Tasmanians showed up at the coffee stand. I am not making this up. They’d taken the early morning passenger ferry from Seattle and the 118 bus. They said they’d come because of a New York Times article that featured the coffee stand, but we were all immediately suspicious. Travel halfway around the globe for a cup of coffee? I mean, yes, the coffee is excellent and the regulars are a hilarious bunch of reprobates, but still.

They sat quietly off to the side initially, but when they finally announced themselves, we were terrified. Tasmanian devils! I have to say their disguises were terrific. They came looking exactly like a luminously lovely young woman and her preternaturally clever seven year old son. Plus, they’d obviously had some pretty fine dental work because when they smiled we saw no fangs.

The woman said her name was Heather. Such an innocent-sounding name. She was soft spoken. I detected no grunts, growls or rasps. The kid’s name was Elliot, because, she said, he was conceived during an earlier visit to Seattle and named after the bay. I’m here to tell you, these Devils had their act down pat. The charming Heather was nice. Little Elliot was too. “Nice” is not a characteristic normally associated with Tasmanian Devils. Nor is it a characteristic normally associated with the regulars during “insult hour” every morning at the Burton Coffee Stand between 8 and 9 a.m. So naturally, suspicions rose.

Nonetheless, we continued to engage them in conversation.  Did I mention she was luminously lovely? Petite, with a pixie-like smile. Some of us older guys are prone to extending conversations with lovely women since, truth be told, that’s just about all we’re up to.

So completely taken in by these two we were that someone from the coffee stand, who shall remain unnamed, gave them a motor tour of the island before dropping them off “up town,” as we say here.

They said they’d come back soon. Maybe they were just casing the place before launching a frontal assault. Maybe this was all a Tasmanian ruse.

I checked the police report this week. There were no reports of bitings up town.

— Will North is an island novelist. His latest novel, “Seasons’ End,” is set in Burton.