The Tale of Eight Tigers.

"Its Time," the huge, yet sleek, mother tigress whispered,
She looks upon her cubs with her golden eyes
Her coat was thick and black like the darkness
And she stood before her cubs, one by one she licked foreheads.
And pushed them off one by one the black tigers walked away
Her golden eyes faded n the night,
Moments later, the first tigress died,
As the sun's color yawned above the horizon
Its first rays touched the tigers through the shadows,
Where the sun hit them their fur turned orange,
And where the rays were blocked by shadowy branches,
The thick black fur remained,
And they became striped forevermore,
The eight brothers never stoped, Never knew.....


As the beautiful cats roamed the forests,
On their journey,
They separated,
And walked and walked,
and finally settled their territory Solitaire,
They hunted the nights
And Tigers were everywere,
Splashing in the rivers,
Rolling in the high grass,
and eight tribes emerged.

The eldest brother, Bali, a water lover,
Found a beautiful tropical island
Was happily chasing butterflies
On his beach in 1937,
When he was shot dead,
Medicine men gathered around his body
and ripped the bones off Bali's skin
to make exotic potions.

Caspian, proud and slim
Thrives in the thick jungles,
Hears trees crashin down,
Men shouting,
As the jungle got thinner and thinner,
So did Caspian,
As there was nothing to hunt
To weak to walk,
He fell next to a tree stump
And died, it was 1952

Javan, the smallest of the brothers,
Had wanted complete isolation,
So he made his way onto an island,
Just North of were Bali had lived,
And he saw the fishing boats come
His golden eyes stared from deep in the woods
When they saw the morning sun-colored tiger,
They screamed; so Javan roared back
The fishers ran in fear,
But later returned for him in 1972,
They chased him onto the beach,
Javan ran and ran
Until his wounds overcame him, and he collapsed,
Sand and blod coated his shiny fur

Yet another brother
Calls his home South China,
He stands up on his hind legs,
As bulldozers rumble in,
Glattening the forest,
Starving, panicked, he runs to mark his tree again
Clawing at his tree, in late 1999,
The bulldozers take over completely
and turn it into a parking lot

Elsewhere in China, Indo, another brother,
Paces around his shrinking jungle,
Stares at a mall all day long,
Wanting to be left alone,
So many strange scents, so little food,
watching cars, he steps on a false ground
And lands on spiked poles in a pit,
Bleeding to death in 2002.

On Yet another island,
Sumatran, the stocky brother, in 2010,
Was chasing a wild deer, He easily caught up to it,
As he drove his huge teeth into the deer,
He saw the deer was on a rope
Farther up, he glimpsed the smiles of laughing men,
He quickly became dizzy and fell into the grass
Moments later, his beautiful pelt was removed.

Siberian, The biggest of teh brothers,
Preferring the cold,
Found his calling in the snow,
Sniffed at the trackes of poachers,
And vanished into thick forest
Since 2019 no one has seen Siberian

The youngster of the litter, Bengal,
Runs swiftly through the jungles of India,
Muscles rippling,
Orange and black coat glistening like satin
Under the sun,
Doesn't  know he's the last one
People come on huge elephants to see him
But one starry night in 2023,
He wanders off the reservation Bengal doesnt see
The red truban poking out behin that tree
But he falls just the same

All the mother's children are dead,
A tiger is now merely a picture, a video,
A memory........

WHY DID YOU LET THAT HAPPEN?

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