It was getting close to five in the evening when Raju, the forest guard’s son, came and informed us that a villager’s buffalo had been killed by a tiger. Since my friend’s father was looking after the rehabilitation program of the forest department for the villagers, it was his duty to investigate such kills and confirm that it was actually the doing of a tiger.It was not uncommon for villagers to claim that all the cattle that died in the region, whatever the reason for their death may have been, had been killed by tigers.
all we heard was the chirping of birds on their way home for the night We’d been driving for half an hour when we arrived at the closest point on the path to the kill. From here on we would have to trek through very thick undergrowth to reach the spot. We had been visiting jungles quite often since childhood but never had my heart beaten so fast as it was doing when we pushed our way in through the first of those thorny bushes.My friend’s father signalled us all to be absolutely quiet for a while as he listened for any kind of a signal from the surrounding jungle about the whereabouts of the predator.
He listened a while longer and then feeling a little more satisfied about the safety of the venture, moved on in the direction of the kill. We were extremely excited about the whole thing and kept looking ahead to try and get a look of the kill. There wasn’t a sign yet. We need not have bothered concentrating so much on the search because as we reached around 20 yards from the kill, the stench of the already decaying carcass began to fill the air. The kill had obviously been there for more than a single day and was already partly eaten. I could see our "tutor" relax a little as he could see that the tiger had already had quite a meal the previous night. He then began our lessons.
We sat there for quite a while, calming our nerves down. The chatter, that always seems to take over after an adventure like this, had begun as we slowly drove back to a nice hot meal we had thought we’d never be having again!!
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