On this occasion the town would not enjoy the macabre fascination of reading in the newspaper the caption beneath a picture. They’d never see a photo of the remnants of what transpired that morning; the sneaker, or the scraps of clothing the mauled mangled half eaten human remains lying on the bed of pine needles in the woods of Shannon Tweedle’s preserve. Most would be surprised to learn – a couple of years later – when Tikki escaped, that such creatures lived in the woods near their houses.
Until very recently Shannon Tweedle had no neighbors. The sandy scrubby pine woods sat undeveloped for centuries and stretched for miles through central New Jersey south and east to the shore. Most newcomers were unaware that not far from their development, the seventy-five-acre parcel that adjoined their own comprised the habitat for twenty-six “or so,” because, even Shannon didn’t know how many there were, (some had had cubs) tigers, donated to or purchased by their reclusive neighbor.
The buzz had not yet risen to the level of alarm as the incredulous mothers, where they congregated and discussed these strange rumors. Something repeated by some at the just-christened Town playground, or at their Mommy and Me classes, something heard from locals at the Country Store. The locals loved to spook the newcomers; loved to laugh after the City folks left the counter and climbed back into their Lexus. The butcher’s assistant would watch through the store window ready to bust out laughing in anticipation of the dawning of the realization of what he’d said. The woman with her groceries and her kids, fat welling around the straps of their bathing suits as they watched cartoons in the air conditioned S.U.V. that cost more than his house. He imagined the mother in a funk of thought in the cabin of the car among the shouting children for the five-minute drive back to their three thousand square foot mcmansion; houses built upon, adjacent to or between a Superfund site and a woman who harbored almost two dozen honest-to-god, real live tigers. Five hundred pound monsters that moved silently, could leap over a privacy fence like you or I step over a turd, snap up their brats in a heartbeat, and crack a skull like a nut, and “you should’a seen her face, oh my lord! It was hi-larious.”
“But that wouldn’t happen a’course; the Tiger Lady had a fence,” the butcher’s assistant would say matter-of-factly, as though it didn’t bother him one way or the other.
Except for the builders and the realtors, locals would rather have the Tiger Lady any day over the newcomers. The city people poked their noses into the Town Council, – first time that other Party ever won for mayor! They increased minimum lot sizes, passed zoning ordinances, raised the school budget every year, come hell or high water; they fretted about wetlands and what have you. At least the Tiger Lady minded her own beeswax; didn’t care if you hunted out of season, drove an ATV through the woods, or raised chickens in your front lot. The Tiger Lady stayed on her side of the fence.