The look in the tiger’s eyes was one of pukiness. From a distance, when he saw the gazelle across the African Veldt, the graceful animal looked small, like a morsel. He sprang through the tall grass, and a hundred lesser creatures fled, scurrying and diving into hidey-holes in the dark earth. Ten feet from his prey, he left the ground. His claws caught the gazelle and brought it to ground. Now, half an hour later, his stomach felt on the verge of detonation, with more than half the prey still uneaten.
“Clean your plate!” his mother had admonished him since early cub-hood.
He groaned. The gazelle was much, much bigger than it looked.
The tiger thought about what his wife had said as he left for work. “When are you going to get your eyes checked?”
Ron Heimbecher, writing as Ron Lynch Chalice, is the author of Kiss the Breath of Sunset and Batting Practice. Visit his website at www.ronchalice.com
© 2007 Ron Chalice. Original for CCF (Chalice grants CCF first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).
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