MAN-EATING TIGRESS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5508, 2 December 1929, Page 2

MAN-EATING TIGRESS.

BENGAL DISTRICT TERRORISED. ’ 168 HUMAN VICTIMS. For four years the Ambabhona tigress terrorised a district in Suyal, Bengal. During her man-eating career the brute killed 168 persons, and the Bengal Government offered a reward of 500 rupees for her destruction. In the Empire Review Mr E. A. Guest, formerly a subdivisional magistrate, recounts the history of the tigress and the manner in which he had the good fortune to kill her. So great was the natives’ fear of the tigress that the timber industry of the district was paralysed because of the risk of entering the forest. The tigress had formed the habit of tracking the woodcutters by the sound of their axes, and she would stalk them and carry them off. She lay in wait for the postal runners, being attracted by the sounds of the bells they carried. Even a crowd of people was not immune from attack? When she was hungry the man-eater would charge into a crowd, and in the' confusion she would procure a victim with ease. Day or night made no difference. With continued immunity the tigress became fearless. She approached homesteads in the day, and as a result many villages in the forest were deserted. Because of her cunning and ferocity natives came to regard the animal as the incarnation of a deity. They believed that because she had eaten so many human beings she had gained human intelligence. Mr Guest relates that on the first occasion on which he sat in a tree at night waiting* for a shot the natives begged him not to make the attempt. Next morning, when they found him alive, although the tigress had prowled round the bait, they atributed his safety to superhuman agencies. All the white, civil, and police officers in the district were competing for the honour of bagging the mankiller, which daily grew bolder. Every device and lure known to hunting was used, but the tigress acquired an extraordinary cunning. She turned the tables on two native hunters and killed them both. After that the natives would not attempt to destroy her. The nearest she ever came to being shot was in a beat when she was fired at by an Indian forest officer, who missed her.

After several attempts on the life of the outlaw, Mr Guest’s efforts were crowned with success. He received news that a girl had been carried off in the daytime, and immediately he moved his camp to the locality. That night the tigress killed a buffalo close by. On the following night Mr Guest sat over the kill, but she did not return to her prey. Pursuit of her became difficult, because she would consume the soft flesh of her kill and then travel perhaps 10 miles the same night and kill again. On the following day the tigress killed another buffalo, and, contrary to her habit, dragged the body up a watercourse, where it stuck against a rock. It was very wet weather. Mr Guest heard of the kill early in the morning. By noon, in tlie pouring rain, he had taken his station in a tree 40 yards from the body of the buffalo. At 2 o’clock he heard the beast roaring on the hill close by, the sound coming swiftly nearer. He was on the tip-toe of expectation. One of his troubles was that he had to keep continually wiping his rifle sight clear of the raindrops of the heavy tropical shower. Suddenly he saw the tigress emerge from the undergrowth and spring on to the rock where the kill lay. It was a perfect shot, and Mr Guest fired only once. The soft-nosed bullet from a .303 rifle killed the maneater instantly. The natives went wild with delight, and as they believed their deliverer to be superhuman, he had some difficulty in preventing them from paying him divine honours. Every particle of flesh was taken and eaten. It was the only tiger in Mr Guest’s experience of more than 20 years whose flesh the people seized upon.