Animalistic: Cross-Posted From Light Reading

Original post on Light Reading

I got halfway through opening a store with Storenvy but didn't finish it. I would have had to link my account to Paypal and I decided I didn't want to.

I named the half-finished store Animalistic and I made a logo.

After deciding not to proceed with Storenvy, I was closing the logo image in Photoshop when I thought of this addition to the name. It was prompted by a conversation between one of the keepers at the wildlife park I was at last weekend, and a visitor.

The visitor asked what the keeper thought was on the tiger's mind, and the keep said he was pretty sure that he was thinking of lunch - lunch being the keeper and the visitor.

"I'm pretty scrawny," said the visitor. "Would he be interested in me?"

"He'd be across that enclosure faster than you could say knife."

I was in a group of four people with special access to the animals, and at some points I was just a foot or so away from the tigers.

The keeper warned us against grabbing the fencing to steady ourselves, because our fingers were very tasty.

And I was thinking about the tiger springing across the enclosure quicker than I could say knife, and homing in on a tasty handful of fingers.

Polar Bears

Early in the morning we had been down by the fence with the polar bears. Again, I was just a matter of inches from the bears. They were huge. The sensation of one of them coming closer and its sheer bulk was an amazing experience.

It wasn't just that it was big, though. It was lithe, and it looked like it could move very fast.

If you wonder who would come off best between a tiger and a polar bear, then before last weekend I would have said the tiger would be the winner.

I guess I would have imagined it attacking the bear from behind and hanging onto its throat, and slashing with its claws.

But now that I have seen the bear, I think one swipe with its paw would break a tiger.