Nine Man-eaters and one rogue (1954) by Keneth Anderson

Author:Keneth Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Jungle Book

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than their bigger cousins, and confine themselves to the outskirts of the town itself, well out of the tiger area, because of their fear of the larger animal to whom they themselves sometimes fall prey.

Early in 1946 a small male tiger appeared in this locality with habits distinctly its own. It began with minor killings of calves and goats, snatched in the evenings from returning herds, near the outskirts of Birur, and its depredations were at first taken for those of a panther, except for the characteristic breaking of the neck in the case of the larger calves. This method of killing is almost exclusively followed by tiger, and sometimes by the larger species of forest panther, known as 'Thendu' in Hindustani, so that there was appreciable cause for mistake in identifying the marauder as one of the latter, till on one occasion a frightened herdsman actually witnessed the killing of a young cow, whereafter the question was no longer in doubt.

This young animal rapidly grew to adulthood in the area, miraculously escaping the shots of various shikarees, both indigenous and foreign, and grew in cunning and daring too, till in eighteen months it became a major menace to the cattle-grazers, killing twice, and occasionally thrice a week, and invariably selecting a particularly fine specimen on each occasion.

Towards the end of 1948, I accompanied a party of friends to Yemmaydoddi, with the object of procuring a trophy for one of them, Alfie Robertson, who was shortly due to return to England. I had received news of the tiger on several occasions and felt sure it would be a fairly easy matter for my companion to bag the animal, provided we camped at Birur a few days till receiving news of a kill.

We motored from Bangalore, the distance being 134 miles. Unfortunately I was detained at my office and we left late in the evening. The roads were execrable, and we

met with an accident near a place called Tiptur, 86 miles from Bangalore. We were using my friend's car and he was driving. The rear wheel went over a deceptively flat stone, which stood up on its edge when the wheel passed over one end of it, the other cutting a nine-inch slit in the petrol tank, which was at the rear of the car. Eight gallons of gasolene thereupon poured on to the road, and the vehicle came to a stop.

We had no spare petrol, but were carrying a Primus Stove, for which we had brought two bottles of paraffin oil. Passing one end of the rubber lead of the foot pump into a bottle of paraffin, we contrived to fit the remaining end on to the pipe leading into the carburettor after having first started a syphon-feed. Thus we managed to cover the short remaining distance to Tiptur. Here we awoke the only tinker in town, unbuckled the fuel tank and managed to patch up the rent with the side of a paraffin tin which I found outside some sleeping inhabitant's house.

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