An Infestation of Tigers

It was near the city of Jaspur, not twenty miles from the outskirts, where a small village had suddenly found itself infested with tigers. They were not real tigers, of course. For years now, the real tigers could only be found in the wildlife parks. And mostly fallen into history were the sad accounts of people taken while working in the fields or sleeping in their beds. But these tigers–the kind that infested–were not capable of man-eating. Why? Because they were so small.

It was believed that they had reached the village by hitchhiking in the suitcases of a village lawyer on his way back from Punjab. The lawyer had been known for insisting on an excessive amount of baggage whenever he traveled. And the little tigers, being not much bigger than young rabbits, became determined stowaways. When the lawyer got home, his maid opened the bags, and the creatures quickly escaped through an open window. It was only a matter of weeks until they were everywhere. 

“There’s something behind the water drums,” said Avyann Agarwal to his wife one day, after working on his roof. The sun was beating down through the sparse canopy, heating the metal door frame where he was trying to rest his hand. The air was thick and mirages danced in the road. 

“Is it the cobra again?” asked his wife. “I hope you won’t spare him this time.” 

“No, it was something furry and it moved like flowing water,” Avyann said. “I believe it had stripes too, unless this heat is getting to me.”     

“Stripes?” said his wife. She clutched at her throat and backed toward the house. Avyann moved to the corner of the shed, pushing aside some drums while trying to keep an eye on his feet. Maybe it had been a cobra, he thought. The lighting was not good in the shed and it was a very hot day. He wiped sweat from his eyebrows, and strained to see into the shadows. He was holding his sharpest hoe, ready to strike. 

When it sprung out from the dark corner, bounding up the side of a drum and onto his shoulder, Avyann almost fell over backward. He thought he heard it growl as it passed his ear, but it was not the growl of a rat. It was a deep sound, yet unamplified. After the mysterious vermin dashed out the shed door, Avyann had a trickle of blood on his shoulder from what appeared to be tiny claw marks. 

“I’m becoming concerned about your mental state,” said the mayor to Avyann, after he had gone directly to the village center to report his trouble. 

“I’m telling you, I’ve seen tigers in real life,” Avyann said. “In fact I’m one of the last in the village who still remembers them. It was just like a tiger, but smaller than any cub and smaller than even Ramji’s rabbits.” 

“Go and get some rest Avyann,” said the mayor and he slowly closed his office door. 

The second sighting came in the cane fields the next day, where Zahira Bhatt was finishing her work and noticed something moving in a stack of wood near the clearing. Knowing better than to put her hands where she could not see, she made a small torch and began forcing blue smoke into the stacks. After a time, she saw the little tiger emerge, spitting and growling. First it came in a low crouch, with eyes like green fire. She could see its tiny claws gripping the logs and she thought she heard a sound like the hissing of a kitten.

“What work of Brahma is this?” Zahira gasped. The tiny tiger was growling at her now, showing tiny fangs and moving closer along the log. With a swipe of her torch it was gone, down off the wood pile and into the brush. 

Ten more sightings had been reported to the mayor before he began to believe. There had been a little tiger found attacking the legs of goats, in a pen near the edge of the village. One was spotted inside a kitchen cabinet, but it had managed to escape before being captured. Another was seen prowling under the bed of the village magistrate while a servant was cleaning his room. And yet another was found stalking a toddler in a backyard garden. None of them had yet been captured. A young girl had come close, putting a basket over one of the tigers, but her hands had been badly clawed when she tried to handle it.  

“I’m beginning to believe these accounts,” the mayor said. “But it will be necessary to see one dead or captured before I can be sure.”

“They move very quickly,” said an older boy. “I’m the best catcher in the village, with 45 rabbits to my name, and even two wild pigs, but I still could not corner the one I saw in the ravine last night. He went like a blur and climbed a mahogany tree into the darkness before he was gone.” 

“It’s only a matter of time before one of them takes a pet from a rug or–Vishnu forbid–a baby from a crib,” said Zahira.

A few weeks passed and the sightings increased. Soon there were tiny tigers haunting nearly every home and farm. Sometimes they formed packs, but more often they were seen as solitary flashes, murdering rats and plundering chicken coops. Some of the farmers set traps, without success. The little tigers were incredibly fast and had the same athletic ability as their larger kin. They had the same temperaments too, full of ferocity and cunning.

One day, the mayor’s assistant made an investigative call to the Punjab region. The hotel where the lawyer had stayed confirmed there had been sightings on the property during that week. Another call to a local newspaper uncovered that the tigers were not from the jungle at all, but had been developed, through a series of mutations, by a deranged American expatriate living in the Nepalese foothills. According to the reporter, the man had conducted these unholy experiments over the course of twenty years, in a fenced compound called “The Silk Yarns of Annapurna.” 

Two years ago, approximately six of the little tigers had escaped the compound and had made their way south. When they were persecuted by native wildlife, they found refuge on the streets of Lahore. Before long, they were taken unwittingly on a bus to New Delhi. There, they adapted well to city life, easily living off the abundance of rats, waste and small pets. Their ability to climb and their ferocity made them difficult for the pest control men to manage. Now, thanks to the hapless lawyer and his unattended bags, they had found the village. 

Then the day came when the body of the little village guard dog was found near the mayor’s office. The mutt had braved real tigers during his early years, saving lives in the middle of the night with his fearless barking. But when his owner arrived, weeping, he inspected the wounds on the dog’s neck and found tiny puncture marks on his throat and tiny claw marks on his back. How ironic, he thought, that the dog had been taken in such a way. 

“It’s gone too far,” the man said, while wiping his tears. Finally, in an act of desperation, the mayor called his cousin in New Delhi and told him how bad things had become. 

“They’re killing our beloved pets in the streets,” the mayor said on the phone. “Their numbers have grown too quickly. Now they run back and forth in broad daylight. We’ve tried guns and poison and even hawks, but nothing has slowed them.” 

“I have a friend,” his cousin finally said. “He is a man who’s very familiar with unusual problems. And he’s very good with technology.” 

“What are you suggesting?” the mayor asked. “What sort of technology could help us with this problem?”   

“Artificial solutions for artificial problems,” the mayor’s cousin finally explained after a long pause. And the puff of his cigarette could be heard through the phone. 

“Well,” said the mayor. “Send him right away. I’ll take whatever solution I can find. It isn’t as bad as the old days yet–with the man eaters and the frustrated hunters and all the bush beating–but it’s close. I can pay him decently for his trouble.”

“I’ll call him tonight,” the cousin said. “I’ll give him your number.” 

The following week the stranger arrived. He was carrying an antennae and he wore a large backpack. He was overly dressed for the heat of the jungle, but he explained that his name was Mr. Yogikiya, and he told them he only needed two days for his “solution” to be fully operational. 

“It involves artificial intelligence,” Yogikiya explained. “This is a robot. His name is Sterilo. He has tank tracks to handle any terrain, but he’ll work day and night, mostly in silence. He is especially good at identification. And he learns very quickly between his friends and his enemies. Soon, your village will be clean.”

“But how will your robot do this?” the mayor asked, wanting more specifics and beginning to wonder about unleashing something so unknown on his village.

“He’ll use lasers to zap them. It will be quick and painless and humane,” Yogikiya assured him. After the introduction, there was little delay. Yogikiya put the robot inside Avyann’s shed, staying the night in a bed that Avyann had set up for him in the house. Yogikiya used a little screen to tell the robot where to go first, but he admitted that the robot would soon take its own path, going wherever the tigers took him. 

The first night, the robot killed two little tigers hiding inside a water drum. The next night he killed twenty, moving down the street from one nest to another. After he swept each area, the villagers collected the tiny, slightly charred pelts the next morning. Some adorned their homes with them, and some were even scheming on how to sell them. The robot was remarkably accurate, except for the time he accidentally zapped two of Zahira’s chickens–one black and one orange. “He must’ve mistaken them because of their colors,” Yogikiya explained soberly to a frowning Zahira. “I’m sure the village will compensate you.” 

As for Avyann, he was just as pleased as anyone with the progress. He was cleaning up a zapped tiger from his garden one morning when he looked at the little powerful body, its lean muscles and shiny stripes, so intricate and unique. And he couldn’t help but remember the time he saw his first real tiger, while riding in his father’s cart one evening before sundown. It was a big male, and he was moving along a treeline, following a troop of howling langurs. The tiger’s location had already been betrayed, and he was walking with his head and tail raised while the monkeys mocked him. Avyann remembered his father’s grip on the donkey’s reins with his other hand on the old .22 gun. At the time, the orange sun was coming low beneath the branches, and it seemed to catch the big cat on fire. He was so relaxed and powerful. When the sight passed, Avyann was filled, for the first time, with both awe and fear.     

By the end of the week, there had been no new tiny tiger sightings in a full 48 hours. The mayor’s face was glowing when he met with Yogikiya in his office. “This has been incredible. The robot is doing what we could not do,” the mayor said. 

“Yes,” said Yogikiya. “I’m a firm believer that all problems can be solved with technology. I believe your tiger infestation is over now. When they do return, I can loan the robot out to you again.” The mayor paid Yogikiya one million rupees and shook his hand. 

The next day, the villagers found Yogikiya putting the dismantled robot back into a large case which he then stuffed into his backpack. An hour later, Yogikiya’s car arrived, coming down the dusty road in a cloud. He was given a sendoff by a group of villagers. Some of them wore hats made of little tiger pelts. The hunt had been an incredible source of entertainment, and many of them were exhausted but inspired. 

That night the village slept well, and there were many deep dreams. There was no growling in the sheds, no terrified chickens. The moon was out but nothing prowled in the moonlight. The big tigers were still far away in the deep jungles and the tourist-laden parks, like they almost always were. And now the little tigers were gone too, relegated back to the slums and dumpsters and hotels.

  It was two weeks later when Avyann’s wife called to him as he stood in the road, looking out across the fields and forest beyond. “Why don’t you come in for supper?” she said. Avyann was thinking about the village and how long he had known it and had seen it changed by trial and error. But before he turned, he thought he saw something moving across the clearing, low, bright and orange in the light of dusk. The langurs were screeching. When Avyann stepped across the road, he could see nothing. Where there was movement, there was only stillness. Where there was noise there was now only silence. There had been something there, something uncertain. But it was gone.