to the Far East in 1890, “but God has not supplied the artists.”^4 One has
the sense that Anatoli Khobitnov could meet that demand single-handedly
—in any medium.
Hunting poachers and tigers requires an entirely different skill set than
making art; nonetheless, Khobitnov once shot a leaping tiger between the
eyes at twenty-five yards, a feat more troubling than impressive until you
realize that the tiger was seriously wounded and had been terrorizing a
village for weeks, and that Khobitnov was wounded, too: he made the
shot having taped his rifle onto the cast covering his broken left arm,
which had been mauled three weeks earlier by a tigress.
The tigress that attacked Khobitnov had been asleep in the snow when
he and his companion stumbled on her on that snowy afternoon. Based on
the fluids they had seen staining her previous rest spots, they thought they
had been following a nursing tigress, and they were hoping to locate her
den. It wasn’t until later that they realized the fluid they were seeing was
suppuration from the tigress’s mange-ridden skin. It is always a bad idea
to surprise a napping tiger, even when that tiger is napping at death’s
door, but by the time the men realized their mistake, there was only
fifteen feet between them. The tigress awoke with a start, let loose a
spine-rattling roar, and leaped at Khobitnov’s partner. Khobitnov was as
surprised as the tigress and he performed one of those instinctive animal
acts that make one proud to be human: he sacrificed himself by jumping
in front of his unarmed companion. Khobitnov was armed, but with no
time to take proper aim all he could do was thrust his rifle butt into the
tigress’s face. The blow broke one of her fangs and the tigress responded
by knocking Khobitnov off his feet with a stroke of her paw, sending his
rifle flying. What happened next gave new life to the cliché “staring
death in the face.” The tigress jumped on Khobitnov’s chest, giving him
the extraordinary experience of looking up a tiger’s throat: nothing on the
horizon but fangs and tongue and a cavernous black hole—the same
picture early Christians painted of hell. What Khobitnov remembers most
vividly is not the fear, or the pain, but the temperature—her “hot, hot
breathing.”
ron
(Ron)
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