This is a work of fiction.
Many years ago, a mother tiger gave birth to three cubs, and for the first few months of their lives, the cubs lived ordinary, extraordinary, tiger cub lives.
One day, however, the mother tiger did not return home from a foraging/hunting trip. The cubs were lost, not knowing what to do. They tried to hunt for themselves, but didn’t have the skills or experience to do it well, despite their intuitive knowledge. They lost weight and struggled. But then one night a group of people came, crated them up separately, and carried them off.
One of the cubs, a female, was placed with a small traveling circus. The circus decided that she was too young to train properly, so they used her in a clown act, where the clown, pretending to be an animal tamer, would bark out orders to the cub, which, as she was completely untrained, she would ignore, racing around the enclosure to the delight of the audience. She was billed as the Holy Terror for her frenetic actions.
As she got larger, however, this behaviour was no longer as cute, so she was retrained to behave in ways that would scare the audience instead. Holy Terror was a fast learner, and quickly figured out how to avoid, and even anticipate, the ‘punishments’ meted out for misbehaviour, and how to act as a fearsome, unpredictable tiger, even though she was not.
But she missed the constant attention she got when she was younger. She now had her own cage, and had fewer visitors than before. Being alone and dependent was frightening, and so were the long road journeys between shows. Somehow she knew that tigers, when they grow up, are largely solitary creatures, but she missed her mother and her siblings, her ‘streak’.
As she aged further, the lack of exercise, the unvaried diet, and the chronic stress combined to take a toll on her health and agility. She was no longer, as her name suggested, a Holy Terror. There was some discussion about what to do with her, and finally one of the trainers came up with an idea to keep her in the show. Knowing she was very intelligent, the trainer taught her a variety of signals for two opposite actions — “pounce” and “stay”. She would be rewarded with food (and audience applause) for acting on the non-verbal signal, even when the trainer’s voice said the opposite.
The trainer explained to each audience that Holy Terror, now renamed Crouching Tiger, was actually the spirit of an ancient ninja reborn in a now-aging tiger’s body, and that he, the trainer, could communicate with the spirit telepathically. Crouching Tiger sat crouched on a high platform while the trainer held up a large card, visible to the audience but not the tiger, with the word “pounce” or “stay” on it, and the trainer then said either “pounce” or “stay” to Crouching Tiger. A reward (and applause) was given whenever Crouching Tiger did what was on the card, regardless of whether that was the word the trainer actually said to the tiger. Her furious, graceful “pounce” was from the platform onto a large stuffed animal on the floor below.
The act was a considerable success, since Crouching Tiger had been trained to obey the last non-verbal signal she saw before the trainer said either word. Seemingly uncannily, the ninja spirit ‘read’ the word on the card she could not see, unerringly, time after time. Critics tried to solve the trick, including by tying the trainer’s hands so he could not signal her, but Crouching Tiger had mastered so many non-verbal signals — foot movements, eye movements, even body posture — that she always ‘read’ the unseen card correctly. She became so skilled at reading the trainer’s body language that she hardly even needed the signal to know what was needed to get the reward.
But sadly, audiences are fickle, and even tigers with ninja spirits get old and tired, so the show became less popular, and the platform had to be lowered so Crouching Tiger could still safely make the “pounce” as required.
The circus group gathered again, and decided it was time to retire Crouching Tiger. They found a group that released wild animals that had been domesticated back into the wild for their final years, and this seemed the best solution for her.
Some of the circus members were in tears as they accompanied her to the release point. They sat with her in her cage as the animal welfare group urged her out to take her first wild steps since she’d been a small cub. “You’re free, now!” they called out to her.
But of course Crouching Tiger was terrified. What was this strange place? Who would teach her the signals she would need, now, to earn the food rewards she needed to survive? Why were they trying to get her to leave her cage, her home? She refused to budge.
Finally, her trainer stood before her, looked into her eyes, and gave a long series of subtle signals, all of which, she knew, meant “pounce”. He placed a stuffed animal on the ground outside the cage, and then, in a loud voice, called out “Stay!”
Crouching Tiger pounced out of the open cage onto the stuffed animal, and the circus team quickly closed the cage door. The trainer, his eyes full of grief, ran to the truck cabin towing the cage, and they drove away. Her new caretakers gave Crouching Tiger a wonderful meal as a reward, and made plans to slowly wean her off feedings until she could, hopefully, learn to fend for herself in her new, ‘wild’ home.
Very tentatively, Crouching Tiger wandered into the sanctuary and explored it, first checking out the periphery, which was mostly fenced, and orienting herself to her new home. There were a number of strange creatures in the sanctuary, but her instincts and sense of smell told her that they were mostly not dangerous to her. There was one creature with a strangely familiar colouring that she considered the most dangerous. It had a warm, ‘mother-like’ smell, but when she actually saw it, she didn’t recognize the wild growling creature as one of her own species. It was not like her.
Crouching Tiger quickly selected and settled into one area, sheltered in the forest, as a suitable place to sleep. Each day she would survey the perimeter of the refuge, checking out the other creatures in it, and then wander back to the entrance, where each day the refuge wardens had her dinner ready for her. And then she would watch the sunset and return to her sleeping place.
Only one part of the refuge was unfenced, and it was on the edge of a huge high cliff that overlooked the ocean. Having never seen an ocean, Crouching Tiger found this area especially interesting, and a bit frightening. She would stare down at the water, at least on days it was not obscured by fog, before continuing on her route, pacing the perimeter of this new home.
A few weeks after her arrival, Crouching Tiger awoke early. There was a heavy mist, and it was an unusually cool morning. She did her usual survey of the perimeter, and then stopped and lay down by the edge of the unfenced area, which was completely obscured by fog. And then, she rose, and stood on the precipice of the cliff. In her mind she saw and heard the signals and the words of her trainer. And then suddenly they were not the trainer’s signals and words, but her own. For the first time, there was no one to tell her what to do.
She watched her inner self signalling to her, telling her she was now the master, now the wise ninja who knew everything, who knew exactly what to do. And she listened to the voices inside her, saying, louder and louder, the words she had heard so often, but which now meant something completely different.
And then she crouched down, as those inner voices called out “Stay! Stay!”
And with a single motion of incredible strength and grace, she answered them, pouncing off the precipice and disappearing into the sea of clouds ahead of and below her.
It could have been longer, with plot developments and added drama and fleshed-out empathetic characters and clever diversions. But I have little interest in that kind of fiction, so this is what I wrote instead. Yes, the circus people conflated Japanese ninja and samurai myths with the Chinese crouching tiger/ hidden dragon idiom. No, this story is not in any way a moral statement; though it is, of course, an allegory. And yes, I’m aware of parallels between the ambiguous ending of the Chinese movie of the same name, and the ending of this story. Image is by Midjourney AI, my own prompt. Midjourney ❤️ Crouching Tiger.
