A Tiger’s Tale

Dormant for twelve years, depraved and hungry. His might once the envy and scourge of predator and prey. A trophy scalp in anyone’s money. Patiently the tiger waited. Those post the striped assassin filtered through their meaningless tasks, meaningless to him anyway. He is the short tempered beast; eager, hasty, yet on the other paw indecisive and suspicious. Yet, calculated to know that every twelve years he would kill. He granted respect, not as some may have perceived, as a merciless killer, but a trouble shooter, cradled with respect. True. It was his type that pounced, disarmed and clung to the jugular, working fangs, deep, a rancid breath over-powering, an acrid empowerment of affluence. He was a carnivore of psyche.

But now he was skinny, weak, he needed building. It was years since he pawed the Rabbit. One foul sweep was it gobbled it up without a trace. Ten years since he was robust enough to slay his soul mate the Dragon. He flirted and toyed with the snake before trapping him in his paws, eight years since he galloped and cavorted with the Horse. Before it too was chopped it down in a flurry of distant dust from a worn out yester-year. The Ram he knew would be tethered and mid way through its sentence he’d kicked around the idea of saving its strength and letting the little bleater go a little further, but his quick fuse and the modern calendar would not allow such a compromise. The Monkey chattered and teased from the tree tops, screeching taunts chastising through the jungles canopy. But Monkeys also sleep, and that’s when Tiger’s wander. The Rooster was a snack, although he had seemingly wasted too much energy trapping it or so he thought, but it what a lip-smacking dish. Luckily for him the dog was sleeping too when its demise was chartered. And the Pig in 2016, what a crackling-crispy delight. It gave him the zest to continue when it was all so easy to curl up and kip forever. However, one meal each year was not enough for this zenith. He was powerful, he knew it, they knew it, his secretion he felt now in the wilderness was to be no more, it was time for all to know, he was on his way back. The Rat next entered his vision and engaged in a natural game of cat n mouse in the twilit streets of the urban jungle. T’was then the turn of the Ox, oh my, the Ox. The Ox nearly killed him, not through any ferocity of the beast’s horns or by a butt of its gargantuan head. The Ox knew hardball too. The tidal wave wrestled deep in the sheer weariness of the Tiger’s heartbeat, for it panted hard in the fight, enough to endure slight angina during the bite, or it could’ve been indigestion. But he was a cat, he knew how to store his energy, and he could flit through the tough months and pound on success in bouts of necessary sustenance fuelled by favourable adrenalin. Yet now here in the lull before the storm he laid, waiting as patiently as he’d ever done, for soon he was to reign supreme again. Often he’d reflect on those before him with deep sympathy, but such was the pneumato law. Oh how the ‘others’ should have known he’d be back, how they should have known this archetypal captain of evolution possessed the tolerance, the restraint, the foresight, the deep, deep thinking. To catch a catch was his law. He was a survivor, he knew his prey, he knew how to stalk, he knew how to kill. But for now in 2022 he will once again reign supreme, he will strut his strut amongst the inferior dwellings lay strewn in his wake and ponder whether next time if he could do it just that little bit easier, “That’s enough of this rant, I’m off for an elephant.”

Beware when the Tiger’s on the prowl!

By Prim 2010