Overnight

IN THE NIGHT

After the prologue of the golden sunset, the night quickly embraces the dark countryside, filled with night and nothing. In the last hour, the growing darkness melted into a timeless stillness, and the high tops of the trees rose up as guardians of the sublime sculptures centuries.

Not far away, a family of howler monkeys back to his home, a silence disturbed increasingly tangible. Great flocks of birds flying north contrasted with the colorful clouds of twilight.

For a moment I remembered the rafting trip Bhramaputra, which I had placed in the domains of the worshipers of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. I held my body against magnum 20-20, which gave me a strange exhilaration. A gentle breeze produced a wheeze when grazing the high crown that was a thousand souls dying and a maddening sense of loneliness I feel imprisoned when surrounded by virgin forest.

Suddenly an unearthly roar startled me a roar that was both the terror and sorrow of the mother earth. Then the beating of my heart began to hammer the ears. The Bengal tiger. The legendary beast was only a few yards from my shelter.

I could feel the dull grunt of the beast and the creaking of the branches that did not hide his silent passage. The beast, me, and behind a desolate wasteland. I turned slowly and free insurance for my gun, quickly spotted by infrared telescopic sight the magnificent silhouette.

Carefully center the animal, the infrared viewer became very clear night, then leaned gently rest my finger on the trigger. But the scene I was shocked, the animal was in its jaws a small tigrecillo and back, three more followed him. For a second that seemed endless, I felt his bright eyes fixed on mine through the scope. Do you distinguish a plea in her eyes?, I will never have certainty.

He continued his journey, I sketched a smile, sat on a log and watched the passing of the young mother. Then, reassured my rifle ... for ever.

NELSON ASTEGHER