The Tiger

"It’s about Siberian tigers, the largest predator on earth. They can weigh 600lbs. Their numbers are greatly reduced, they are living in a reserve near the Chinese border. This book talks about how the very impoverished people living in these woods are negatively impacting on these tigers, quite specifically by shooting them. They sell them to the Chinese across the border who pay a huge amount of money to use them in folk remedies. Apparently the invention of Viagra has helped preserve the rhinoceros. Viagra works and powdered rhinoceros horn does not, so there’s less need for it. Boiled tigers’ bones and whiskers and whatnot in the folk remedies really don’t do anything for anybody. We are eliminating this magnificent animal that will soon be extinct. For one impoverished hunter, one tiger could get him a Toyota pick-up truck. He shoots a tiger. But this tiger has been shot several times, so this time the tiger objects, and all that was left of the hunter was two chewed up boots with the stumps of two feet in them. Sometimes nature strikes back, and in this book you really do root for the animal. I’m a frog lover myself, but they’ll be extinct any day now so she can save her breath. I understand there are these apex species people donate for, whereas smaller things like the frog are ignored by the public. How can we prefer one to the other? My children had a pet rat that was very well-treated, and yet we were exterminating their cousins in the walls. And what about eating animals? There are terrible pig factories where pigs are kept in the dark attached to a machine, and can’t even turn around. They never see light. It’s like some horrible science-fiction movie."