Indo-Chinese and Malayan tigers

[brotherbear]

This book was written by a grizzly bear enthusiast and Viet Nam verteran; copyright 1990.~Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock.The most serious health problem in the district was tigers. Every dark, rainy night a half dozen tigers came into Ba Hiep and ate water buffalo. The tigers came in groups of four to seven, the Yards said, and killed the buffalo in their pens. Water buffalo were normally tethered outside the village limits. But these Montagnards were an animistic people and the buffalo was their noblest animal. The Hre were quite naturally terrified of tigers coming down from the hills on black nights, and they huddled by their cooking fires in bamboo houses on stilts while the roars and bellows of dying buffalo filled the darkness all around. The Ba Hiep Yards became so afraid of losing their animals, they brought the buffalo right into the village and tied them to their front porches.The health problem was that the entire village was five inches deep in buffalo crap. It contaminated the village well and gave everyone the shits. Hookworm and other parasites were epidemic. The Yard kids all walked around on stilts. I got my jeep stuck in it once. The medical solution might have been to ambush a tiger or two, though tigers and Charlie tended to be out on the same nights. 
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