Tiger Cub Solly Taragin ‘23

Tiger Cub Solly Taragin

I haven’t hit puberty yet, which pisses me off. While all of the other tigers are getting bigger and faster and stronger and hunting and chasing women, I’m still having my mom hunt for me. You know how embarrassing that is? I just want to be like the rest of them. Fred has already killed four gazelles, Eric went off on his own to see if he can survive a cross country run, and Rico got a girl pregnant! It just pisses me off. They’re embarrassed to hang out with me.

“You wanna go play tag, guys?” I ask them. “Grow up, Baku; we’re not little kids anymore.” “Mom, can I go out with friends tonight?” I ask my mother, knowing that I don’t have friends to hang out with. “No, I need my sweet baby boy with me.” It pisses me off. I’m not a baby. When I was little—or when my friends were little like me—we’d play tag in the forest and we’d be cracking up the whole time; we couldn’t get enough of it. Our parents would tell us that they just caught supper, and we’d beg for another hour of ecstasy. One time while we were playing tag, Eric ran off far away and we couldn’t find him for hours. We were panicking and were super scared to confront our parents about the missing tiger. After hours, we found Eric swimming in a river. We were all pissed at him, telling him how much of an idiot he was. “Just shut up and get in the river,” he said. We jumped in and began paddling with our growing paws. It was magical. Fred dared any of us to go under to try to catch a fish. Eric and Rico were too afraid of drowning, but I dove my head under the surface and emerged with a fish in my teeth. “You’re crazy,” they told me. “I don’t know how you do it.” I miss that feeling more than anything–the feeling of making other tigers look at me with pride and maybe even a tinge of jealousy; there’s nothing quite like it. I hate those mammals now. All of them will see once I hit puberty… if I hit puberty.