The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are Today by Dunn Rob

Author:Dunn, Rob [Dunn, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2011-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

10

From Flight to Fight

In the case of Bakhul, the villagers would chase back, but only when Jim Corbett came to town. Corbett was a young man, a boy really, but he came to town to kill a tiger. He wanted to give the village back its peace. With age, Corbett would become the greatest hunter of man-eating cats, but not yet. At this point in his life, he had the wisdom of a young man combined with the bravura of a big gun. With the gun in hand, he turned his fear to rage, flight to fight. He wanted to pursue the tiger, and, once in town, it did not take long for Corbett to find the tracks. At the place near the oak trees, he found blood and the beads of Bakhul’s necklace, and began to follow the fresh trail. He had not walked very far, fear and then also rage welling up in his throat, when he found one of the girl’s legs beside the river in a pool of blood. Bakhul was very definitely dead.

Corbett bent to her leg, tenderly. As he stood there bowed and saddened, he began to feel as though he had made a mistake. The feeling he had was very specific. The hairs on his arms rose. His skin tingled. A chill ran through him, and he had an overwhelming urge to run. Each of these responses was innate and unconscious, triggered by the sound of falling dirt that he heard coming from the hill above him. It was the tiger, looking down, its heavy paws crumbing the hill’s loose soil. Corbett’s body released adrenaline, which flooded his blood and he began to feel, for lack of a more perfect word, explosive. His heart leaped at his ribs as though trying to find a way out. Some part of his body was sure that he, like Bakhul, was about to die, and that part of him was urging him, imploring him, to run.

The tiger turned from Corbett and moved on, up the hill. Fighting to control his body’s urgings, Corbett got a better grip on his gun. He went after the tiger and as he did, he was suddenly aware of thousands of sounds. He could hear leaves bending back and forth in the wind, insects moving, and then as he got closer, the tiger’s low snarl. He was alert with adrenaline. Corbett followed the pad of footfalls and a kind of pounding that might have been his heart, or maybe even hers. He pursued all afternoon until his mind was overwhelmed with the accumulated hormones and blood. He could not make out where he was relative to the village or the tiger, and so he started to panic. He ran over rocks, through blackberry thorns and giant ferns until the sky was dark blue, then black. He had no light, so although the tiger could undoubtedly see him, he could not see her. He was in a narrow crevasse, closed on one end.

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