Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1910 — THE TERRIBLE MAN-EATER. [ARTICLE]

THE TERRIBLE MAN-EATER.

A T**er Thnt Killed R«gnUrl 7 PHt«*B K«Htci a Month. There has been much argument as to what prompts a tiger to turn to a diet of human flesh. In most cases It probably begins almost by accident. A tiger, after two or three nights of hunting without a kill, waits hungrily beside a jungle path for what may pass. Perhaps it has been beaten off and bruised by some animal which it had attacked, and besides being half famished, Is In no mood to tackle large and dangerous game. It chances that some sauntering native, a child, perhaps, or woman, thrusts irresistible temptation In Its way. Having once learned how feeble a thing a man is, how es*lix. killed and how palatable. It tries agjrif* and yet again, until It becomes the scourge of man. The theory that a man-eater is always an old tiger, more or less toothless and feeble, which has found the strain of catching vigorous wild game too muh for Its falling strength, has been upset by the bagging of notorious man-eaters, which were found to be young animals In the full pride of their powers; and it is likely that the taste for human blood Is passed on from mother to child, the tigress, herself a man-eater, teaching her cubß to hunt as she hunts. How terrible a \hing a man-eater can be may be judged from the fact that a tiger generally kills every second night, whether Its quarry be man or beast. Having killed, it makes a meal that night, then drags the carcass somewhere Into cover and more or less conceals It as a dog may hide a bone. On the next night its habit is to return to the same kill, and It Is in that second visit that the hunter usually finds his opportunity^ It is not the rule for a tiger to return a third time, not because it is above eating carrion, but seemingly it tires of the carcass which it has already twice mumbled over. Thus one tiger has been known to kill regularly its fifteen natives a . month with almost mechanical punctuality. Another. which seemingly did not confine Itself entirely to human flesh, devdured an average of eighty persons, men and women, for several years; while yet another Is reported to have killed 127 persons and to have stopped traffic on a public road for mftny weeks. Many a tiger has killed more human beings than any man has ever scored tigers. On the other hand, if sportsmen sometimes fail to bag tbelr tiger without excuse, native women have been known to beat off the “deepmouthed brute, dread of the brown man." with nothing more formidable than a bamboo cane.