Grandaunt Tigress IV

The tigress had to extend her search for the prey to a forest. She couldn't find the child she planned to eat. The prowling in the forest made her thirsty. So she found a little clear stream to drink some water to slake her thirst. The moon came out when she squatted by the stream to drink. Lo and behold, there was an image of the little girl reflected on the water. She was up on a tall tree.

“Come down,” Grandaunt Tigress ordered. “Or I'll gnaw down the tree to get you!”

The little girl refused to come down and Grandaunt Tigress started gnawing at the tree. Afraid the tree might be felled, the girl shouted down: “Grandaunt, please don't gnaw. I'll come down to let you eat me.” The tigress stopped gnawing. “Come down, quick,” she said.

“But before I do,” the clever child said, “you must grant my last wish. I wish to eat birds deep-fried in oil. There are many nestlings asleep in their nests on the tree and I can catch them easily. All I need is some boiling oil to fry them. Would you please get me some boiling oil?”

Grandaunt Tigress thought it was a reasonable request. “Stay up there till I come back,” she told the girl up on the tree. Then the tigress rushed back to the shack, where she boiled peanut oil in a wok. With the wok full of boiling oil, she rushed back to the stream. The child was still up on the tree. She tied the ears of the wok with a rope and threw one end of the rope up to the child on the tree. “When you catch the rope,” Grandaunt Tigress told the little girl, “pull it up slowly.”

The girl did what she was told. She then caught featherless nestlings, fried them, and ate them.

“Now that you've satisfied, come down this minute,” Grandaunt Tigress ordered.

“All right, Grandaunt,” the girl replied. “I'll jump down from the tree. You just open your mouth wide and I'll leap into it. But I don't want you to see me jump. Would you close your eyes when I leap?”

Her imposter grandaunt thought it did not matter whether she opened her mouth with her eyes closed or not. “It saves me the trouble of catching her when she comes down,” she said to herself. So she opened her mouth and closed her eyes, waiting for the little girl to jump off the tree.

The oil in the wok was still very hot. The little girl tilted the wok to pour the oil into the mouth of Grandaunt Tiger. She was killed in an instant. She turned back to a large, old tigress. Both the tiger and the tigress Koxinga brought to Taiwan from China were dead. People on Taiwan saw no more tiger in the wild.

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