This week (at the zoo) I interviewed a tiger, though I couldn’t ask it any questions, and of course it couldn’t answer any. Instead I did what writers can do. I observed it as closely as possible, and I tried to put those observations into words. It’s amazing what results this simple procedure can produce. I noticed—and later noted down—all sorts of things about this tiger that I would never otherwise have noticed.
It was a Sumatran Tiger, a mature male. He had a slight mane. The mane wasn’t fully pronounced like a lion’s mane, but the fur around his face was still noticeably thick and full. The tiger was lying in several centimetres of water, as you can see from the photo above (taken through glass, and yes that’s me looking in). His front paws were resting on a rock out of the water. And he was very close—just a couple of metres away—so I could see and observe his huge head.
That was the most striking thing about him. His head. It was full of expression, full of character. Stripes spread across his cheeks and forehead, though not across his broad nose, which was a uniform orange-brown like a lion’s. Perhaps unexpectedly, there was a lot of soft white around his mouth and cheeks, not because he was old, because he wasn’t, but because the white was part of his features. There was even a dash of white over each of the eyes, amidst the stripes.
At times, his ears flickered vigorously. You can’t tell that from the still photo of course, which is why I have to tell you. And at times, he moved his head grandly towards the rock, and then back again. Once, he yawned. It was the most terrific yawn you can imagine, his jaws stretching wide to reveal fearsome hunter’s teeth and a huge pink tongue. But most of the time, he just sat quietly at rest, perhaps contemplating us through the glass, much as we were contemplating him.
I need to also tell you about his whiskers, which the photo doesn’t do justice to at all. His whiskers were enormous and stiff, extending from each side of his large upper muzzle across the whole width of his jowls. I would never have imagined such impressive whiskers unless I had seen them for myself and had then made notes.
But that’s the whole point. That’s why I “interviewed” the tiger in the first place. I wanted to experience a real tiger as closely as possible. This tiger was a member of a race that is critically endangered in the wild. I wanted to put its features into words. Those whiskers were precisely the sort of feature that were worth noting down. They gave me a whole new view of what it meant to be a tiger. His whiskers weren’t soft and decorative. They were bristly and enormous, a whole sensory array that would pick up all sorts of sensations as this tiger moved through a dense forest, even in near darkness.
As a writer, I take these sort of notes hoping that I might be able to use them to depict a real tiger in a story or poem. Upon reflection, I had noticed all sorts of things that I had not really known (or had only known dimly) before. I had noticed this tiger serenely resting in the midst of his environment; I had noticed his facial features; I had noticed his vigorously flicking ears; I had noticed his enormous teeth and jaws (when he yawned); I had noticed his unexpected whiskers; I had noticed his enormous head with his eyes scanning his surroundings (including me!).
Hopefully one day this tiger will inform my own depiction of a tiger. That’s one of the things I love about being a writer. It prompts me to experience things more deeply than I might otherwise experience—and this week I was very grateful to experience a Sumatran Tiger.
© Peter Friend, 2019. All rights reserved.
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