The Tiger
The tiger is one of the dangerous animals of the jungle. Everyone wants to see tiger but no one wants to meet face to face.
Without tigers. the forests and jungles would lose their flame but the world would be a tamer place.
Tigers are divided into three classes, the deer slayer and cattle lifter and the man eater.
When the tiger becomes old, and loses its teeth, it turns its attention to man. For the tiger, change is a great come down.
Tigers are not tired of walking. Man eaters cover long distances by night as many as forty or fifty miles. The ordinary tiger in the jungle is also a great walker. The tiger paces through the jungle with its head down, feet trading velvet footsteps, twenty miles a night with—out thinking anything of such an exercise.
With senses alert, with a roar that awakens the whole world into a start of terror, the tiger wanders in the jungle.
The roar of a tiger calls up mates to a banquet. The tiger arrives within close range, takes one or two quick balancing steps and then rushes forward to its prey. If it escapes, the tiger gives up the chase after about eighty or a hundred yards.
Tigers as a rule kill once in every four days. They can fast for long periods of time—for a fortnight or even three weeks if necessary.
No other beast in the jungle has such powerful eye sight as the tiger. His eye sight is excellent and his pupils at night become large into glowing lamps. His hearing is also very sharp. He is a first class swimmer. But the tiger has no sense of smell. If the tiger had a powerful sense of smell, it would have been a great danger to mankind.
Even such a dangerous animal like the tiger is afraid of the porcupine which often in a fight kills a tiger.
It spreads its body into a ball of spears and sticks them into the tiger by the (sweeping movement of the) tail.
The porcupine has scores of quills on its back and tail black spears tipped with white and varying in length from one inch to fourteen inches. They are hidden in its fur and are lightly attached and each has a thousand barbs tucked away in the stem. These barbs appear immediately when flesh it touched. Except the porcupine, the tiger rules over all the animals in the jungle.
On hearing the roar of the tiger, even man grips his rifle more firmly as he does not want to be a feast to the hungry tiger.
