Izvestia: “Putin neutralizes a tigress”
Arriving in Vladivostok on September 1, Vladimir Putin went from a plane to a helicopter that was headed for the taiga. The whole purpose of the exercise was to see the Ussuri tigers, and the buzz is that thanks to the Prime Minister, tigers, or rather the scientists who watch them, now feel much more comfortable.
It happened that the vanishing Ussuri tigers have lately survived mainly on American money: the U.S. has issued grants for their study and support for their population. But Putin, who, as it turns out, is very fond of these beasts, recently backed a similar programme of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Government press service (which informed Izvestia about Putin's venture into the taiga) says that "this is his project and he has raised the money for it". As a result, in mid-August Russian scientists set up a tent in the taiga, deployed a laboratory, put up tracking cameras on trees and installed traps in order to catch the tigers and put collars with navigators on them to study their habitat with their help.
This is precisely where Putin was headed. Miraculously, after many days of waiting, the first Ussuri tigress fell into a trap just in time for the Prime Minister's visit.
"Let's go there." The Prime Minister got behind the wheel of a brand-new Land Cruiser in the company of the Minister for Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu and several scientists. He gunned the engine and steered the vehicle toward the place where the tigress was trapped.
A Vesti camera crew working on a film about Ussuri tigers had been crawling through bushes in search of good shots for two weeks, and arrived at the spot a little ahead of Putin. There was the promise of a good story: they started to film the struggling tigress, who seemed to be hopelessly trapped in a steel loop, when suddenly it began furiously licking the jammed paw, wetting and smoothing the hard hair so that the paw eventually slipped out of the loop. The fierce beast was free, eyeing the journalists who ran for cover. It is anyone's guess what would have happened had Putin, dressed in army fatigues and armed with a rifle, not emerged from the thicket. The scientists accompanying him carried similar rifles with sedating darts. One of them shot a dart, but missed, hitting the animal's rear.
The sedative had no effect. Without much ado Putin pitched in: he raised his rifle and the very first dart hit the shoulder plate. The tigress collapsed, baring its teeth. Its eyes glazed over.
"I think it's hurting," the Prime Minister said, approaching the beast.
"No, it isn't," the scientists reassured him. "It has one eye open, it can see everything".
"It can see and it will remember everything," Putin noted.
While the beast was sedated, no time was lost in putting a collar around its neck. The Prime Minister decided to do it himself: he gently embraced the head, ran the collar around the neck and secured it. He then measured the animal's length while the scientists were taking a blood sample.
"No alcohol?" Putin joked, drawing relieved laughter from his companions. "How much time do we have?"
"About 30-40 minutes".
"I'll start the clock," Shoigu said.
"We don't want it to eat us," Putin remarked. "There are a lot of others out there who want to eat us, anyway."
The Prime Minister did not for a moment forget those whose grants had sustained these tigers, who are only now receiving Russian collars.
It was time to leave. Putin took the tigress's paw and planted a gentle kiss on the animal's muzzle. (By the way, exactly a year ago, on the eve of September 1, Putin planted a similar kiss on a sturgeon fish in Astrakhan, an odd coincidence).
...Scientists told the Prime Minister that the Far Eastern leopard is facing an even worse plight than the Ussuri tiger. Its tiny population is facing extinction, and there seem to be no grants available to the leopard. One has to be proactive and take the animal under the Government's wing, they insisted.
"Let's do it, let's protect the leopard as well," Putin said enthusiastically.
Nobody would dare to stand in the way.
