In December I had the opportunity to go to the Ranthambore Tiger and Game Preserve in India (about 140 km south of Jaipur, in Rajastan). I was lucky enough to be able to see a young tigress, ten years old, named Noor (“Light”) as she lounged by a still pool in the forest. There are not many Bengal tigers left, and their very limited habitat is being encroached upon daily. The tigers don’t know where the borders of the part are, so water buffalo, goats, and sheep owned by people in nearby settlements often seem like easy meals. Farmers and herders can respond (the same thing happens in Africa with big cats) by poisoning the carcasses killed by the tigers, thus killing the tigers in return. In 1982 there were 44 tigers at Ranthambore, in 2005 there were 26. In fact, villagers, angry at having been relocated out of the park in its establishment in 1973, tried to kill the person responsible for the foundation of the park. Noor is probably the granddaughter of Ranthambore’s most famous tiger, Machli, or ‘The Lady of the Lake”, who lived to be 20 years old and died in 2016. Machli became famous not just for her longevity, but for a dramatic battle to the death that she had with a huge crocodile at the end of the lake she considered her territory.