stepping from side to side as if searching for a clean sightline. By the
time he brought his rifle to his shoulder, the tiger was already charging.
One can only imagine the rush of chemistry coursing through those
superheated bodies, the pounding in Khomenko’s chest as those molten,
spectral eyes closed on him at dream speed.
Apparently, Khomenko maintained his composure because he emptied
the barrels individually rather than together. Both shots hit their mark but
had absolutely no effect; the tiger came on in a blur of twelve-foot leaps
and swatted Khomenko in the face with its paw, knocking him to the
ground. Then the tiger picked him up in its jaws. Khomenko was carrying
a canvas rucksack, and it was clear from the shredded axe handle sticking
out of it that this was how the tiger lifted him. The tiger then proceeded
to shake Khomenko like a rag doll—so violently that it broke his wrist
and both of his legs. Then the tiger put him down and went away.
Khomenko was probably unconscious for a time, but he came to and,
with his remaining usable hand, he drew his knife. Then he began to
crawl back the way he had come. He was found a few feet from his neatly
laid gloves, frozen to death, his legs jutting off at odd angles. The
temperature that day was minus forty-five. When Khomenko’s body was
lifted gently onto the back of the loggers’ bulldozer, it was as rigid as a
mannequin.
Only afterward, when the exit tracks were followed, did it become
clear the tiger had never left the site. Despite the presence of heavy
machinery and half a dozen men, it had remained nearby, watching, just
as it had the day before. As one taiga hunter said, “The tiger will see you
a hundred times before you see him once.”
One of the most striking details of this case is that Khomenko had only
two visible wounds on his body: a single claw mark on his face and some
lacerations on his broken hand. The tiger had no interest in Khomenko as
food, and probably had never intended even to scratch him. It turned out
later that this tiger had a defective claw that did not retract with the
others. This was probably the claw that wounded Khomenko’s face, and it
was also by this faulty claw that Yuri Trush would identify this tiger’s
prints, track it down, and shoot it from the top of a farm tractor. Far more
ron
(Ron)
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