A Tale of Tiger Pee

I tried to silence my heart but I couldn’t. It refused to slow down its beating, echoing in my ears like a twenty-one gun salute. I wasn’t trying to listen to my heart for a magical choice that could change my life. Though quite a good option in soppy stories, that wasn’t my aim, because I was trying to listen to the forest for a creature that could disappear. The Royal Bengal Tiger.

The undergrowth was far too thick. Why, oh why, did we have to come during the monsoon, when all the plants just grew thick and fast and beautiful, also very conveniently covering any creature that wanted to hide in it?

It was doing this on purpose to annoy us, I was convinced.

“Listen!” whispered Phillip. “Alarm calls!” My heart started its gun salute again as I strained my ears. Peew… peew… peew… Those were the chitol (Indian Spotted Deer). They made those sounds only, and only when they smelled a tiger, or a leopard.

“Look, Phillip!” whispered someone else, a touch too loudly, I thought. “Tiger pugmarks.” I leaned over the side of the jeep. There were, indeed, huge footprints, much akin to that of a dog’s enlarged tremendously. I took my camera out and the click of the shutter seemed to resound through the jungle, probably scaring off any big cat in a 10-mile radius.

The mark of the elusive tiger...

“Basmati rice,” I heard Phillip say. To say that remark puzzled me is an understatement, but you don’t realize that then such outwordly things like that had no effect on me. Then, my attentions were solely on the undergrowth and the grass, hoping against all hope that a secret, an orange, large secret, striped with black, would be revealed.

 “Tiger pee,” came another perplexing remark. But with the next one, the murky depths of these strange words were all revealed, but the strangeness did not decrease to any extent whatsoever. “Tiger pee smells like cooking basmati rice.”

 Curiosity got the better of me and keeping a wary eye on the surrounding forest, I drew in a huge sniff. And indeed, along with the smell of the fresh grass and the trees and the unavoidable whiff of some creature’s poop, came an undeniable scent of basmati rice. But this just wasn’t any basmati rice. This was basmati rice’s smell exaggerated to an extreme. You almost wanted to gag.

“It’s close by,” whispered Phillip, excitement growing in his voice. “It’s here, somewhere.”

My heart sped up despite all efforts on my part. My full attention as lavished on the trees and the ground. Come on… come on… come on… I tried to imagine how the tiger would appear. Would it come striding out of the undergrowth like it owned the world? Or would we catch a glimpse of its face in a bush? Would it cross the road majestically? Would it…

My stock of would its ran out and reprimanding myself at my lapse of attention I looked again at the unyielding bush. What if I’d missed it as I meditated on its appearance, missing the appearance, as it were, by thinking about it too much? You could have cut the air with a knife. The ‘peew, peew, peew’ of the deer continued on and on, like suspense music. Added to it were the hoots of langurs, repeated over and over with growing intensity. A tree rustled. What was that? My frantically searching eyes turned sticks into legs, grass into faces.

Suddenly, along with the deer and the langurs, came another sound. It was a hoot, but not really a hoot, a growl, almost, but a hootish growl, if that makes any sense. It probably doesn’t make any sense.

“That’s the tiger!” Phillip’s careful whisper rose a little. “It roared!” I was a little mystified. Tigers don’t roar like that. In movies, in books, in comics, everywhere, tigers have earsplitting roars that echo everywhere. Not that thing that we just heard. Phillip rapped on the driver’s cabin, a signal to move. The engine started again, and the sound resounded through the forest. Slowly the deer’s calls ceased with the langurs.

“It’s not here any more,” Phillip said loudly over the sound of the jeep splashing through puddles. “The roar was far away. The deer caught the scent of it, that’s why.”

Slowly my heart slowed down, overwhelmed with disappointment. We had missed the tiger. But, as I thought with a shiver of the sheer excitement of waiting and listening and watching and smelling basmati rice, I had gained an experience.

Have you ever seen a big cat? Or gotten close? Tell us about it in the comments, or, if you have a tale to tell, mail it to amazinganimalssociety@gmail.com!

The Glasswing Butterfly

I Can't Think of a Good Title but Read It Anyway!

Sighs rolled out of the gate as the jeep’s wheels did.

“We just missed it! I mean, we could smell it. Smell it! We knew it was there…” exclaimed someone.

“Oh, why did we turn left instead of right? I knew we shouldn’t have left that area.” I lamented.

“Just missed it! The tiger!” reiterated another person.

Slowly our grumbles ceased but an audible sigh could be heard from time to time. The jeep had stopped just out of the gate, as one of Phillip’s friends had called him over for a chat. Had they seen it? I directed a stream of silent jealousy, veiled as animosity, at them. Just missed it… Why, oh why, was my luck so terrible?

 “Again, huh?” I said, leaning forward to chat with Sam, the assistant. She had missed a tiger before, too, having heard the alarm calls of the deer and actually finding a dead deer before being called out of the park as it was closing time.

“Yeah, again. And we were pretty close, too!” she said. Disappointment tinged both our voices. I turned back to look at the forest we had just left. What if, by some miracle, right at the forest’s end, it came striding out? I laughed at myself. I hoped too much. What if… there was no point in playing the ‘what if’ game now. It would only increase my disappointment.

There wasn’t much of a chance in seeing a big cat tomorrow, in the last safari, either. Phillip’s streak of seeing a big cat every time in Kabini would be broken, and luck would have its way. Oh, cruel Fate! Why did you tease me so? But this was no time to break into poetry- I had better concentrate on clicking some birds so I had at least something to show for this drive. We had just been concentrating on tigers and leopards and hadn’t stopped for any birds, or anything else, for that matter. Not that we had seen anything else. No mongoose, or gaur, or sambar (a type of deer). Just endless herds of chitol (Indian Spotted Deer) and birds.

Suddenly Phillip came sprinting back from his friends. “Start the jeep! Quick!” he cried, and ran to the forest official’s office/hut for something. The driver reversed back into the park, and turned around, just as Phillip came sprinting back. The car was moving when he jumped in. “Might be a false alarm, but we have to try. Hold on tight, switch on your cameras, and take off your hats. We need to go at full speed!” My heart leapt. Tiger? Leopard?

I started to remove my hat when the jeep started moving. Fast. Gripping onto the seat in front of me, I sat on the hat and looked around. The excitement was obvious on everyone’s face. Hair was flung back in the wind that raced past us, so deliciously cool. I opened my mouth wide, ready to scream but didn’t for fear of scaring it, whatever it was, away. My heart beat fast and I looked around at everything, at everyone. What was it? What would it be? Tiger? Leopard? Please, God, please… The wind continued moving, moving, moving, buffeting us back and forth as the jeep raced at full speed over every pothole and puddle.

Suddenly the jeep shuddered to a halt, and we were thrown back. A group of jeeps like ours and buses were all gathered around an area, blatantly disregarding the rule of being 30 meters apart when looking at wildlife. “I can see it!” said Phillip excitedly. “It’s on a tree, leopard!”

My heart rate rose. “Where? Where?” I asked, my eyes as usually blinded when important things were happening. Someone pointed. I looked. I stared.

There, on a forked tree without leaves that was probably destroyed by lightning lounged a leopard. It was magnificent. Feet hanging over the edge and tail hanging down, eyes closed, silky gold fur iridescent, it was just sheer beauty. I got my camera out and zoomed in. Everything was silent but for the birds and the clicking of cameras. It yawned, canines bared, and a flurry of clicking arose. I just kept looking at it, then at the camera, awed by it. My finger didn’t move off the shutter button. This was amazing. It needed to be recorded. This was a leopard, right there, about 30-50 meters away, huge, resplendent in its glory. This was it. This was a big cat. This was the big cat. I thought of what it made of all these people looking at it with strange blank devices and strange concentrated expressions, and chuckled to myself. But it didn’t really seem to be bothered. Perhaps it was used to it, or just too tired or sleepy. Slowly it turned its head towards us and quickly I clicked, clicked, clicked. I had never seen anything like it before. Nothing at all.

Even as the jeep rumbled away from the leopard, still resting on the tree, I couldn’t take my eyes off it, or stop thinking of it. It was just amazing.

If you've got a tale of an animal you saw, or an amazing behavior you experienced, tell us about it in the comments, or mail it to amazinganimalssociety@gmail.com!

The Glasswing Butterfly

Blogging Challenge Day 3: The Stephen Island Wren

This post I am doing to highlight the danger of introducing foreign species anywhere. I'm quite aware that my last one was way, way, way, way, way too long, and that many of you despaired of reading it. Ah well. I'll try to keep this one short.
The Stephen Island Wren. It used to be only one of three flightless songbirds in the world. Once a widespread inhabitant of New Zealand, the arrival of the Maori drove it to only one small population on an isolated island: you guessed it, Stephen Island. This was the fault of another introduced species, the Polynesian riat, or kiore. Using the IUCN Red List rating, it would probably already have been Critically Endangered by then. It did have one thing in its favor, though: Stephen Island was totally isolated. Until the lighthouse came. Boats kept passing by, and they needed some way to guide them. So they built a lighthouse on Stephen Island in 1894, and some people came to live there as lighthouse keeper. Innocent enough, except the problem is, they brought Tibbles.

Tibbles can go down in history as the cat that vanquished a species. If Tibbles could talk to us now, what she would probably say was: "Veni, Vidi, Vici." (I came, I saw, I conquered) And conquer she did. Pregnant when she came to the island, allowed to roam wild, a single year after she arrived the Stephen Island wren was extinct, and there was quite a healthy colony (but not healthy for other species) of feral cats, all descendents of the great Tibbles, thriving on the island.
It was 1925 before they managed to exterminate all the cats from the island.
Can you see the dangers of foreign species? If one day, you ever venture to an alien place: just one warning. Don't bring your cat. Or your rat. Or your dog. Or your hog. Or your lice. Or your mice. Cause then you just might exterminate a race. Like Tibbles did.