The Tiger

by John Vaillant

It is so cold that spit will freeze before it lands; so cold that a tree, brittle as straw and unable to contain its expanding sap, may spontaneously explode.

Primorye, which is also known as the Maritime Territory, is about the size of Washington state.

Tigers are similar to drugs in that they are sold by the gram and the kilo, and their value increases according to the refinement of both product and seller.

most of the people Inspection Tiger dealt with were armed.

the Siberian tiger, which is, itself, a misnomer. This subspecies is known locally—and formally—as the Amur tiger, and it lives, in fact, beyond Siberia.

The trip to Moscow, on the other hand, is a week-long, 5,800-mile epic on the Trans-Siberian. No other major city lies so far from its national capital; even Australia is closer.

Noah’s ark had only recently made landfall, and that, rather than dispersing to their proper places around the globe, many of its passengers had simply decided to stay, including some we never knew existed.

Within this waterbound envelope live unclassifiable species like the raccoon dog,

Within every major ecosystem nature has produced, she has evolved a singularly formidable predator to rule over it.

“The most terrifying and important test for a human being is to be in absolute isolation,”

Alone, with no witnesses, he starts to learn about himself—who is he really?

You have to have something—some force, which allows and helps you to survive without witnesses.

“Once you have passed the solitude test,” continued Solkin, “you have absolute confidence in yourself, and there is nothing that can break you afterward.

But as soon as you get to the main road and see the bus coming, you understand that those bullets don’t mean anything in this other life.

All of a sudden, you need money—strange paper, which you couldn’t even use to start a fire, and your bullets aren’t going to help you. This transition can be very difficult.”

this subspecies has been reclassified seven times.

in Baikov’s opinion, the creature he reclassified as Felis tigris mandshurica was no ordinary tiger but a living fossil—a

Baikov supported his claim with detailed drawings comparing the skulls of these two animals, which, based on his rendering, do bear a strong resemblance.

“When the majority of people have no means of defense (i.e., firearms) tigers figure that out and include them on the list of potential prey,”

“However, where you have a heavily armed populace (e.g., Russia) tigers also figure that out and ‘take people off the list.’

There is a famous quote: “You can’t understand Russia with your mind,”

Men carry their superiority inside; animals outside.

He hides so well that one starts thinking he is invisible, like a god. Russians say, ‘Trust in God, but keep your eyes open.’

Russian and native alike, told stories of how tigers would leave meat for “Uncle Vanya”—sometimes an entire carcass.

As with the unintended etiquette of winter trail breaking, this passive sharing of food is an integral part of coexistence in the wild.

In this sense, the hunting “culture” of predators and scavengers bears a strong resemblance to Karl Marx’s communist ideal: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Markov had been having trouble with a tiger: something had happened and it wouldn’t leave him alone.

That tiger wouldn’t let us hunt for an entire year.

He didn’t even follow the hunter’s tracks; he went directly to the hunter’s cabin—like he was using a compass.

A tiger did this

I have personally seen cabins there with the doors knocked in by tigers, and I have heard of tigers digging up fresh graves, but I never witnessed it.

he chooses his path and I choose mine. Sometimes our paths intersect, but we do not intrude on each other in any way.

“One gets scared first and then starts thinking; the other starts thinking first and gets scared after the fact. Only the latter survive in the taiga.”

Markov had come by earlier in the month with some boar meat. Trush had a strong suspicion that Markov had robbed it from a tiger kill.

two scents in particular that leaped out from the others: those of Markov and boar meat, specifically, meat from the tiger’s last wild kill.

He knew what it was to have tiger trouble, but he had no issue with this tiger, so in his mind there was no possibility of a conflict.

What should one call it when a tiger starts eating people and shit, and injures itself demolishing man-made things? Is it rage? A loss of bearing? Or simply adaptation to a new order?

he had become something that doesn’t exist in the West, something, if one had to put a name to it, akin to a weretiger.

umgebung,

umwelten

In order to succeed, predators must actively—and consciously—contrive successful hunting scenarios by adapting to, and manipulating, random events within a constantly shifting environment.

all a prey animal needs to do is be anywhere the predator isn’t—it

if you start thinking, ‘He’s a bad tiger; I am not afraid of him,’ well, something bad will happen to you,

The tiger will warn you first, but if you still don’t understand, then he will seriously punish you.”

The tiger was sitting, listening, and then he left. Afterward, I saw that a part of the boar—the haunch—had been left for me; the rest of the boar was eaten and everything was cleaned by the tiger.

The way Mikhail Dunkai saw it, accepting meat from a tiger is like accepting a favor from the Communist Party, or the mafia:

In other words, we weren’t all that far ahead of baboons or chimpanzees.

There is a related phenomenon among predators, large and small, that is politely termed “surplus killing,” but which manifests as a kind of spontaneous, frenzied slaughter.

the lives of tiger attack survivors resemble those of retired astronauts or opera divas: each in their own way has stared alone into the abyss.

The brandname Viagra is derived from vyaaghra, the Sanskrit word for tiger.

“If you go to the taiga, you should be prepared to encounter a tiger—that is where they live.