Book Review - Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett

"For a long minute I stared at this motionless object, until I was convinced that it was the tip of the tiger's tail. If the tail was pointing away from me the head must obviously be towards me, and as the ledge was only some two feet wide, the tiger could only be crouching down and waiting to spring the moment my head appeared over the bole of the tree. The tip of the tail was twenty feet from me, and allowing eight feet for the tiger's length while crouching, his head would be twelve feet away."

Twelve feet away.

Have you ever watched a house cat patiently stalk a bird or mouse? Have you ever imagined being the mouse? It's hard to fathom an entire village or countryside living for years in daily fear of being eaten by a man-eating tiger. But during the early part of the 20th century, many inhabitants of off-the-beaten-path areas in India lived in such a state. Jim Corbett, expert hunter, naturalist, and author, performed a live-saving service for the people of India by putting an end to many of these animals in the 1930's and 1940's. He succeeded by entering the Tigers' minds, anticipating their behavior, and beating them at their own game - if sometimes only by a whisker. This book tells the tales of eight of these chess matches between masters.

Corbett details both imagery and action in a vivid yet unexcited manner. His use of energetic adverbs and adjectives as well as exclamation points is sparse - the simple facts of the situation are enough to bring the reader into the jungle.

"Without taking my eyes off him I groped with my hand on the hillside and picked up a stone that filled my hand as comfortably as a cricket ball. The snake had just reached a sharp ridge of hard clay when the stone, launched with the utmost energy I was capable of, struck it on the back of the head. The blow would have killed any other snake outright, but the only, and very alarming, effect it had on the hamadryad was to make it whip round and come straight towards me."

I omitted the previous text about the snake being 14 feet long.

Some of the author's details seem almost humorous when juxtaposed against the matter-of-fact and bloody details of a tiger's recent kills. For example, no proper hunt would be complete without tea.

"My forty-pound tent had been pitched in a field of stubble a hundred yards from the village, and I had hardly reached it before tea was laid out for me on a table improvised out of a couple of suit-cases and planks borrowed from the village."

That said, Corbett does not come across as a Great White Hunter looking to bag yet another trophy for the lodge back in Oxford. He only hunted man-eaters, and he regarded it as a service and a duty. His deep respect for the tigers comes through in his writing.

My boys and I read this book as a bedtime story over the course of four months. I was a bit concerned they might lay awake at night entertaining visions of tigers breaking through the window to carry them off into the woods. But I think they must have dreamed instead of being Major Jim Corbett - stalking alone through the jungle, anticipating the tiger's next move.