Ustad, The Clever Tiger

Ustad, the park ranger eating tiger

(Jolie) “Knock knock knock.” Auntie Penny was standing outside of our tent door at 6:00 in the morning. It was still dark and Halle got out of bed and opened up the door. ‘Time to go on our fifth safari, she said. We got dressed and went to the restaurant to get hot chocolate while we waited for mom and dad. When we finished our hot chocolates, we walked outside to wait for the dark green safari jeeps. The safari was 3 hours long. We agreed yesterday that we would try to be the first ones in Zone 6 but the driver didn’t come till 6:30. We drove through the village and through the gate and into Zone 6. There were no signs of any tigers because whenever there were spotted deer or sambar deer there weren’t any tigers, so both jeeps switched into Zone 1 (which we weren’t supposed to do).

It was a dirt road and very bumpy. Me, Maya, my mom, and dad were in one jeep and Halle, Zara, Auntie Penny, and Uncle Kevin went in the other. There were a bunch of other jeeps that were already in Zone 1 and they were all stopped in one spot and looking in the same direction. The guide said, “There is a tiger over there, as he pointed a few meters away.” The driver joined the other jeeps and we saw a tiger lying down in some water, staring at us. The guide said he was drinking water. Then the tiger got up and walked really close to our jeep to get to the water hole. He was orange and black and his tail was white and black. He walked slowly while looking at us with a mean face.

This tiger’s name was Ustad, which means clever. Ustad is a male tiger and is hard to find because the males need more space and their territories are very large. Every tiger had a number and this tiger’s number was T-24 (t for tiger). Male tigers can be very vicious. One time Ustad the wild tiger killed a park ranger that was working on the road but didn’t eat him he just killed him and put him to the side. On our way back through the gate we couldn’t tell the gate keeper that we saw the tiger because he knew we were supposed to be in Zone 6 so the guide told us to look sad like we didn’t see a tiger, but secretly we had very big smiles.