Instincts for Survival

Day 3

I groaned. The pain in my neck had subsided but I found myself with a collar around my neck. I opened my eyes and looked around. I was in a forest. I got up and walked through the undergrowth to the place where the forest stopped rather abruptly. In front of me and down a bit, there were two men in white lab coats sitting in swivel chairs. One was at a computer, the other staring at me. I could see the badge on his lab coat and saw that his name was Bert. I couldn’t see the other man’s name tag though. Bert turned and said something to the other guy, who turned to look at me. His name was Ralph. Ralph smiled and pressed a button on the switch panel to his left. “Hello little guy.” boomed the intercom speaker, making me wince in pain because it hurt my sensitive tiger ears. Seeing this, the two men started laughing. It occurred to me to hurt them for being mean, but that was out of the question since I was sure there was some super strong glass between me and them, I just couldn’t see it. Right then a beautiful woman in a pink lab coat walked into the room and both Bert and Ralph stopped immediately. The lady seemed nice and her name was Janice. “Shame on you two. You are terrible, laughing at a beautiful creature after hurting it.” Then looking at me with her wonderful sapphire eyes, she said, “What wonderful stripes he has.” We stared into each other’s eyes for a while then she turned away.

I turned around and walked back into the man made forest. Right then it started to rain. Inside the building it started to rain, weird that they would set it up to do that. But that wasn’t my current focus. Right then I was hungry. I walked back to the edge where the people were and started howling. It was really loud. Janice looked up and I could see a look of sympathy in her eyes. Bert looked up and said, “Shut up.” Those words made me howl even louder. “Awww, the poor thing must be hungry. Bert, get him his food.” She said in a soothing tone. “Fine,” Bert replied, not happy with the chore he was given. He walked out of the room and I stopped howling. I lay down to wait but got up again when Bert reentered the room and placed a tray of food on a shelf where I couldn’t see it. Then he pushed it and the tray came in through a slit in the wall. I rushed over to it and started eating. It was cold venison but tasted fine, and I was really hungry. In less than five minutes the meat was gone and that was a lot of meat, probably about ten pounds of it. After eating I was content and found a good place to sleep and digest. I was partway into the forest. I curled up and fell asleep.