Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [3]
That was it, I thought as I remembered to breathe again. I’d had my tiger sighting. What I had come all this way over thousands of miles and along horrific roads in order to hopefully encounter had, at last, thankfully and admirably, if somewhat unsettlingly, presented itself to my captivated eyes. The elephant moved on, and I counted myself fortunate.
The mahout angled us downward into a steep-sided dry gully barely two elephants wide. Fringed with dense forest on both banks, it offered an easy, unobstructed path back to camp for our patient, bamboo-munching mount. I had put away my video camera and was contemplating imminent relief from the increasing heat and humidity when my Indian friend Negi suddenly cried out, “He’s coming out! The tiger is coming out!”
In the clammy, cloying sweat that coated my face, my body, my head, and trickled unstoppably into my burning eyes, I found myself confused. What did that mean: “He’s coming out!”? My slightly addled, humidity-sodden mind confused contemporary urban concerns with actual immediacies. Was the tiger gay? “Coming out” of what? Out of where?
It finally struck me. The tiger was coming out of the forest. But we were traveling below surface level along the bottom of the desiccated wash. So that must mean . . .
There is not much room to maneuver on the sloping back of an elephant; less so for someone unaccustomed to that ancient but eclectic mode of transport. Seating consists of a pair of simple, open wooden benches slung like saddlebags over the elephant’s back. One person sits on one side, a second on the other, with the mahout straddling the elephant’s neck.
“He’s coming out. He’s coming out!” Negi’s voice was rising with his excitement.
My gear. Where the hell was my gear? I groped for the video camera, then for the battery. Fumbling to put them together was like trying to forcibly mate a pair of reluctant spiders. I could not see what was behind me. If I turned too fast and dropped the camera, it would shatter. (It is a surprisingly long way from the top of an elephant to the ground.) If I dropped the battery, the camera would be useless in my hands. If I was too careless or too hasty in my efforts, I might lose my balance and fall off myself. Then the tiger would no longer see me as part of the elephant, and something Really Bad might happen. In the bumbling confusion and frantic rush to get the camera working, I chanced a complete twist of my upper body in order to snatch a hasty look behind me. The young male had indeed come out of the forest and was once more looking at us.
Down at us.
The tiger was standing on the edge of the gully’s right bank. Framed by trees and sky, he presented as glorious an image as one could possibly imagine. Edgar Rice Burroughs could not have positioned him better. Now out of the shade and standing in full sunlight, he gleamed beneath the baking Indian sun like living, breathing sculpture: pure untrammeled ferocity held barely in check. It was as if he had decided, in the course of his casual inspection of the strange multiheaded creature ambling along just ahead of and below him, to strike a deliberately dominating pose.
Camera—battery—clumsy human digits uncoordinated. As I tried to work faster, it occurred to me.
The tiger was looking down at me. That meant he was higher than the back of an elephant. Higher, and very, very near. He would not even have to exert himself. Half a pounce and he would be on top of the elephant. On top of . . . me. As this realization struck home, an odd heaviness passed through my gut, as if I had ingested a chunk of cold iron.
The moment passed. Deciding he had better things to do, the tiger turned and sauntered nonchalantly back into the shadowy dry forest, his swaying backside essaying a tango, his tail switching back and forth like the taunting lure at the end of a fishing pole. Ready at last, I aimed the camera—and proceeded to acquire some excellent video of disturbed twigs and rustling