Slowly, I backed away, my legs sloshing through the knee
high water. The tiger circled, his gaze fixed upon me. I had finally succeeded
in getting the leash on him. Now the only problem was--just that--I was holding
a lead with a tiger on the other end. Or was it the other way around? Sensing
my distraction, the tiger attacked. He surged through the water, his jaws reaching
out for my lead leg. I sprawled, grabbing the tiger's collar, and dragged him
up onto the bank. Now out of the water, the tiger took the lead and dragged me
back to his cage. Just another day volunteering at the Tiger Temple in
Thailand.
The cub's cages perched upon a solitary concrete slab, its fractured
edges standing in contrast to the natural order of the wilderness around it. There
the morning guests were waiting, having left the pond ahead of us. Armed with shampoo and hoses, the tourists were
then let loose on the cubs, working the sand and grit out of their coarse fur.
As a volunteer, it was my job to hold the cubs still--a
process that usually left one soaking wet and bleeding. These were young cats, yet
even at six months most of the cubs outweighed me. The older cubs were
something else entirely.
Their arrival was the volunteer's cue to go about our other
duties. To handle the adolescent cubs you had to have raised them. It had only
gotten worse since Western influences had convinced the temple to ban physical
punishment. A smart rap on the nose was the only tool we had to discourage dangerous
behaviors. Entire litters were eventually exiled to cages, never having learned
not to bite people. It was heart breaking.
It's to those cells our duties would now take us in an
attempt to provide entertainment for those animals that couldn't be trusted
with freedom. Then it was meal time, for us and the tigers. Meal times held the
secret to how we kept the tigers so docile during the afternoons. It was
rumored we used tranquilizers, but the truth was much simpler than that. It
turns out that the food coma is a phenomenon that transcends species. It helps
that tigers naturally sleep in the afternoon, which made it the only time safe
enough to let in the general public.
The rest of my afternoon would be spent trying to get the
tourists to donate for the building of new habitats, but even that was an
adventure. They came in droves, each with his or her own idea of how things should
be done around the temple. A couple of times it almost came to blows as I was
forced to physically obstruct a tourist's attempts to enter dangerous areas,
but for the most part it all worked out.
All the same, I was always relieved when they left. I was
then free to join the monks for some meditation. Just another day at the Tiger
Temple.
