In Search of the Blue Tiger by Robert Power Read Free Book Online

I. R.?’
    I look at her to see if she understands. If she has worked it out.
    â€˜Oh, Stigir,’ she replies, ‘that’s how you spell it.’
    â€˜Well,’ I continue, excited. Stigir is standing a few feet away, sniffing around the base of a holly bush. ‘I wanted him to have a tiger name, after all. And I read this story in one of the library books. All about a princess standing by a river, trying to get across.’
    I gaze to the other side of the lake. She is there, in my mind, the Princess, in a long flowing dress, looking up and down the waterway for a place to cross. An anxious expression is on her face. Something is about to happen and she needs to be on the other side. This side, where me and Mrs April are.
    â€˜But she can’t. She can’t get across. The water is too deep and the river too wide. Then, like magic … it is magic … a tiger appears by her side. He tells her to climb onto his back and then he starts swimming across the water. She doesn’t get wet. The tiger swims like a crocodile. When she gets to the other side, she lies down and has a baby. A boy or a girl. I’m not sure. Let’s pretend it was a boy. When she goes back to her palace she calls the river Tigris, after the tiger who helped her cross the water, so she could have her baby where she was meant to.’
    â€˜Oh, I see,’ exclaims Mrs April, a broad smile on her face. ‘T.I.G.R.I.S. Stigir!’ She claps her hands and laughs out loud.
    I make an adult laugh. Stigir looks up and barks.

    Some animals are more attached to their offspring than others. Not like the turtles hatching on the beach who never know their parents and have to make a run for it to the sea as the birds fly down to eat them. Others do more for their children than the turtles. Like a pelican. If her children are hungry she will tear open her breast and feed them her blood. Which child would you rather be? A turtle on the beach or a pelican being fed by its parent’s blood?
    I just wish mine would stop trying to kill each other.
Tiger Fact
    Only very rarely are mortal combats between tigers recorded. Once, two cubs were observed walking with their mother along the Lahpur valley, ten miles from Jogi Mahal in Ranthambore. The tigress saw an adult male walking towards them. The cubs hurried away to hide while their mother continued towards the tiger. The tiger and tigress sat down together before moving a short distance to the sandy bank of a nearby stream. The tigress showed affection to the tiger in order to distract him from the cubs. However, the cubs, sad and frightened at being away from their mother, came into the open. The tiger made a sudden dash towards the cubs. The tigress reacted instinctively, attacking the tiger from the rear, gripping his right foreleg and then killing him with a fatal bite to the throat. Later on, the tigress ripped open the rump of the dead tiger and proceeded to eat his left hind leg.

    I hold Blue Monkey tight to my chest. I know how much he hears without speaking, how much he sees without telling. His eyes are sharp and clear and he looks at me like he can see deep inside.
    â€˜Blue Monkey,’ I say, as the cries and clatters downstairs move from room to room like a plague, ‘I remember a time in the garden when I was really small. There was a worm and I threw a brick at it. I don’t know if I hit it, but I threw another brick and then another. There was an old outhouse that was demolished, so there were bricks everywhere. I threw so many bricks and I just kept throwing them where I thought the worm was. In the end all the bricks were piled up and I felt really bad that I had squashed the worm.’
    Blue Monkey is still listening, his soft fur gentle on my cheek. So I tell more of the story and what I know of worms and how you can break them in two and then they grow whole again: a red band around their middles shows you someone else has already torn