I was
just scared and excited and I didn't do anything. Then I saw the animal
prowling around the tree and looking up and heard him making that noise.
Oh boy, it was terrible!
Then, _bang,_ just like that, I remembered about him wiping the leaf off
his paw by rubbing it on his face. It was lucky for me he did that, because
it put into my head something I had read, about the way the natives in
India catch tigers. I read it in a natural history book. There's a kind of
a tree in India named the prauss tree; anyway, its something like that. And
it has big flat leaves.
So the natives spread gum on those leaves. They get the gum from the trees,
too. Then they put the leaves in the path and when the tiger comes along he
steps on them and rubs his paws over his face, so as to get the leaves off.
But that only makes it worse for him, because they stick to his face and
over his eyes and everywhere. He gets just plastered up with them. Then he
gets excited-gee whiz, you can't blame him. And he rolls around on the
ground and can't see and just rolls and rolls and bangs against trees and
gets all played out and then he lies still just like a horse does when he
falls down.
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