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A tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and when he is exterminated — as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support — India will be the poorer by having lost the finest of her fauna." — Jim Corbett, author and legendary hunter of man-eaters
Sept. 13, 2003
FREE STATE, South Africa — As a kid, John Varty couldn't get enough of Jim Corbett's gracefully written books, filled as they are with luridly bloody tales of his hunts in India for man-eating cats.
Tigers, as even their biggest fans will tell you, are dangerous creatures. They hold the dubious distinction of having killed more humans than any other cat species.
A tiger has impressive weapons in her arsenal, most notably the claws with which it grabs and pulls down prey, and the teeth, perfectly designed for sinking suffocation bites deep into the necks of prey.
Right now, I have a fascinating if unsettling close-up view of Julie's dew claw: a long, curved, razor-sharp nail used for grasping. It's the tiger's equivalent of a thumb.
Julie is perched on the sagging, dented roof of Varty's decrepit Land Rover. Her yard-long black-tipped tail hangs inches from my ear. It twitches to my most ginger touch.
Her front paws — the size of my hands with fingers flayed wide open — dangle limply onto the windshield at my eye level. The bulbous pads of her feet look like smooth, brown river rocks. They're thick and cushiony. No wonder she's such a stealthy hunter, as adept at traveling across boulders as in swamps.
