The Tiger

by John Vaillant

poverty, unemployment, and highly dangerous people and animals exacerbates a situation that is, at best, untenable.

untenable /ˌənˈtenəb(ə)l/ I. adjective (especially of a position or view) not able to be maintained or defended against attack or objection • this argument is clearly untenable. II. derivatives 1. untenability /-ˌtenəˈbilitē / noun 2. untenably /-blē / adverb

His mission—to impose order on a world in which desperate beings compete and collide to their mutual destruction—is as difficult as it is necessary, and the situation has improved little in the past decade.

‘First, there was the word and then a deed.’

Trush is a practicing Christian in a largely secular society and, in this sense, patience, compassion, and forgiveness could be seen as revolutionary acts against a system that has, for generations, demonstrated a minimum of these qualities.

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police are implicated in many poaching incidents.

Gitta has saved Trush’s life at least twice, and he has returned the favor an equal number of times. She is his eyes, ears, and sixth sense in the forest. It seems both comical and poignant that such a small dog could mean so much to such a large man, and yet the intensity and clairvoyance of their bond is profound—one

Lubov Trush who simply keeps his heart. They have been married for forty years. Fully a foot shorter than Trush, she is his emotional backbone, and it is a steely one. Herself a former kayak champion, Lubov is tightly bundled, kind and industrious. Goodwill and good food seem to emanate from her. Yuri may run you hard in the bush, but a visitor can still grow fat at Lubov’s table.

What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?

figured Markov for one more unemployed subsistence hunter who wasn’t above taking a lynx or a badger if the opportunity presented itself.

This was not an animal they followed, but a contradiction, a silence that was at once incarnate and invisible.

was hunting for Markov.

During the two decades prior to Markov’s birth, the Soviet Union lost approximately 35 million citizens—more than one fifth of its population—to manufactured famines, political repression, genocide, and war. Millions more were imprisoned, exiled, or forced to relocate, en masse, across vast distances.

Forest dweller

Confucius was passing by Mount Tai when he saw a distraught woman weeping by a grave. Resting his hands on the wooden bar at the front of his carriage, he listened to her wailing. Then, he sent a student to speak the following words: “A great misfortune must have befallen you, that you cry so bitterly.” She answered, “Indeed it is so. My husband and his father have both been killed by

tigers, and now my son, too, has fallen prey to them.” Confucius asked, “Why do you remain here?” She answered, “No callous government rules here.” Confucius said, “Remember that, my students. Callous government is more ravenous than tigers.”

“The Book of...

As the Communist Bloc disintegrated, decades, generations—entire lifetimes—of frustration, discontent, stifled rage, and raw ambition came boiling out, never to be contained again.

The vast majority of Russians were completely unprepared for the ensuing free-for-all.

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“What is chaos?” We’re answering: “We do not comment on economic policy.” “What is ‘Russian business’?” We’re answering: “To steal a crate of vodka, sell it, and drink the money away.”

It was klepto-capitalism on a monumental scale, but it wasn’t the first time. The Bolsheviks had done something similar under Lenin.

“Katastroika.”

Incidental humor of the kind Markov specialized in tends to defy translation, having less to do with a punch line than it does with what one might call situational alchemy.

“No matter what the subject was, he always found the joke in it.”

When one considers that this was the seventh time in a century such a revision had been made, it is easy to understand why so many Russians seem cynical and world-weary, and why they place so much faith in the potato crop.

Mother Russia,

Likewise, the forest and its creatures—plant and animal alike—have a significance that most of us in the West lost touch with generations ago.

It is a connection—a dependence, really—that exists in stark contrast to the State’s willful, capricious, and alarmingly comprehensive destruction of the environment.

May is potato planting time in Russia, and just about everybody participates.

it’s how you make it through the winter in a country where winter seems to last forever and salaries are inadequate,

Our listeners asked us: “Is it possible to make ends meet on salary alone?” We’re answering: “We don’t know, we never tried.”

Before the Revolution, the czar was often referred to as the “Little Father” (the “Big Father,” of course, being God).

The Russian State, in other words, is masculine and paternalistic.

in Russia, the divorce rate is one of the highest in the world, and single mothers (both literal and practical) are nearly as common as children.

Man of the Taiga.

“The most terrifying and important test for a human being is to be in absolute isolation,” he explained. “A human being is a very social creature, and ninety percent of what he does is done only because other people are watching. Alone, with no witnesses, he starts to learn about himself—who is he really?

“He liked bees,” recalled his son, Alexei, who shares his father’s stature, eyes, and cheekbones, “and they liked him. He would go to the hives without his shirt. He wasn’t afraid.” So at ease was Markov that the bees would cluster about his half-naked body, stinging him only occasionally.

When Yuri Trush encountered him the previous year, he recalled being struck by the unhealthiness he saw in Markov’s eyes: they were badly bloodshot and had a yellow cast to them.

Oil, timber, humans, and tigers all have their niche here, and the line between politicians and mafia, and between legitimate business and crime, has blurred almost beyond recognition. This is the Wild East, and business is booming. You

The oldest definitively identified tiger fossils date to roughly two million years ago and were found in China, which is where many scientists believe the species first evolved and then disseminated itself across Asia.

Why they failed to colonize the Americas is a mystery: something about that northern land bridge—Too cold? Not enough cover to stage an ambush?—barred their way. Perhaps it was the cave lions that stopped them.

The tiger was first classified as a distinct species of cat in 1758.

Panthera tigris altaica (Translingual) Origin & history New Latin, from Latin panthera ("leopard") + tigris ("tiger") + altaica Proper noun A taxonomic subspecies within the family Felidae – the Siberian tiger. Hypernyms subspecies: Felidae - family; Pantherinae - subfamily; Panthera - genus; Panthera tigris - species https://www.wordsense.eu/Panthera_tigris_altaica/

the taxonomic scent tree has been marked and marked again, to the point that this subspecies has been reclassified seven times.

Baikov did his best to promote this view, and, to some extent, his efforts are still bearing fruit (and sowing confusion) to this day.

compendium /kəmˈpendēəm/ I. noun 1. a collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject, especially in a book or other publication. 2. a collection of things, especially one systematically gathered • the program is a compendium of outtakes from our archives. – origin late 16th cent.: from Latin,‘profit, saving’ (literally ‘what is weighed together’), from compendere, from com- ‘together’ + pendere ‘weigh.’