Tiger Number Nineteen

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62281924@N07/5671838622/in/photostream
Click above if you want to see her take a stroll.


She's only three-and-a-half and lives near her sisters and litter-mates Numbers Seventeen and Eighteen. The ranger said they're hoping for happy news from her this year. The female tigers have individual territories 3 or 4 km square,while the males have a much larger range with several females within it.

There are about 30 adult tigers in the park now, with 11 cubs- as well as leopards and sloth bears. We didn't see either of those but we'd only been going into the park by jeep for 20 minutes when Number Nineteen wandered across the track. She loped ahead of us for a moment and then settled herself down in a shady spot.

We watched her for an hour or so; at one point there were four 5-passenger jeeps and a "canter" (open truck holding about 10 people) all keeping quiet, awestruck. The only sound was the click of cameras, including some impressively massive telescopic lenses which practically needed their own separate jeep for portage. In a private jeep, there was a camera team from National Geographic; shattering my illusions, as I'd always imagined their cameramen scaling waterfalls with the camera in their teeth rather than getting a tourist jeep just like anyone else who could afford about $NZ 50.00.

It comes with the supermodel territory: paparazzi. She ignored us with a polite but imperious disdain.

The ranger said he thought #19 was probably very hungry as she hadn't killed for a few days. Well, she might have a touch of morning sickness, if his other prediction is true. She certainly didn't look like she felt like rushing around much. The other thought that did occur to me was that, if #19 was more than a little peckish, there were some 30 tasty humans within fairly easy reach, varying between rather tough-looking and scrawny Indian rangers and much more juicy well-fed city and expatriate Indians and no-doubt-slightly-strangely-spiced foreigners. Not all of the open jeeps would have been able to start their engines and get out of the way of a reasonably determined tiger.


Good job the tigers prefer a snack of peacock or a lunch of spotted deer. One thing we weren't too keen to see: Bambi becoming tiger tiffin.

If you were a twitcher, this park would be a splendid place to visit, with many brightly-patterned birds. There was a mongoose, too, from the Snake Control Department, going about his business.

But we'd seen what we came for, heading straight for the top of the food chain; Rereata's twentieth birthday present, a real live tyger burning bright although surprisingly well camouflaged in the forests of the not-night.