interrupted-transmission
2.19.2005
A listless tiger with a coat like a threadbare rug, chases an emaciated gazelle through a jungle smaller than many parks.
The last tiger and the last gazelle.
An animal with barely enough energy to feed itself padding after an animal with scarcely enough willpower to save its own life.
And all the while the cities close in on them.
Fat, sunburnt men and screeching, wheedling children eat ice-creams, crisps and chocolate, film the animals with digital camcorders.
This pair of age-old adversaries, sole surviving representatives of untamed nature, their habitat shrunk to the size of a cage, playing out, in desultory fashion, an immemorial ritual, a death dance which has become a tourist attraction.
Running laps of a few square metres of jungle, hemmed in all sides by putrid cities, photographed by tourists and monitored by conservationists while novellists and newspaper commentators spin metaphors from their unhappy fate.
The last tiger and the last gazelle.
An animal with barely enough energy to feed itself padding after an animal with scarcely enough willpower to save its own life.
And all the while the cities close in on them.
Fat, sunburnt men and screeching, wheedling children eat ice-creams, crisps and chocolate, film the animals with digital camcorders.
This pair of age-old adversaries, sole surviving representatives of untamed nature, their habitat shrunk to the size of a cage, playing out, in desultory fashion, an immemorial ritual, a death dance which has become a tourist attraction.
Running laps of a few square metres of jungle, hemmed in all sides by putrid cities, photographed by tourists and monitored by conservationists while novellists and newspaper commentators spin metaphors from their unhappy fate.
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