A Tiger in the Zoo
By– Leslie Norris
Read the extracts and answer the questions that follow.
He stalks in his vivid stripes
The few steps of his cage,
On pads of velvet quiet,
In his quiet rage.
(a) Who is ‘He’ in the above lines?
(b) Where is he?
(c) Where and how is he walking?
(d) In which mood is he? Why?
Ans. (a) Tiger.
(b) In a small cage.
(c) He walks in his cage slowly and quietly with firm strides in a proud manner.
(d) He is angry because instead of moving freely in the forest, he is confined to a small cage.
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2. He should be lurking in shadow,
Sliding through long grass
Near the waterhole
Where plump deer pass.
(a) Where is the tiger hiding?
(b) Who is going to be his prey?
(c) Why should he be lurking in shadow?
(d) What is the rhyme scheme of these lines?
Ans. (a) He is hiding in a shadowy dark place in the long grass.
(b) A fat deer who will come that way to drink water is going to be his prey.
(c) He should be lurking in shadow to attack the deer who comes to drink water at the waterhole.
(d) a b c b.
3. He should be snarling around houses
At the jungle’s edge,
Baring his white fangs, his claws,
Terrorising the village!
(a) The poet says ‘He should be ….’, which means that he is not doing it at present so where is he and what is he doing?
(b) Where should ‘he’ be?
(c) What is ‘his’ attitude towards visitors?
(d) How does he terrorise the villagers?
Ans. (a) He is in a village showing his white teeth and claws. He is terrorising villagers.
(b) In the forest.
(c) He is terrorising the villagers.
(d) He terrorises the villagers by showing his sharp teeth and claws and growling.
4. But he’s locked in a concrete cell,
His strength behind bars,
Stalking the length of his cage,
Ignoring visitors,
(a) What does the expression —stalking the length of his cage’ imply?
(b) Was he interested in the visitors
(c) Which expression tells you this?
(d) What kind of enclosure the tiger was kept in?
Ans. (a) It means the tiger was walking from one end of the cage to another as if trying to measure the length of the cage.
(b) No, he was not.
(c) The expression—’ignoring visitors’ tells us this.
(d) He was kept in a cell made of concrete walls and long, strong bars so that the tiger could not escape.
5. He hears the last voice at night,
The patrolling cars,
And stares with his brilliant eyes
At the brilliant stars.
(a) What does he hear at night in the zoo?
(b) What do you think he might be hearing when he was in the forest?
(c) How do the eyes of a tiger look at night?
(d) Why do they look so?
Ans. (a) He hears the sounds of cars of guard making rounds to check if everything was right.
(b) He must be hearing the sound of other wild animals.
(c) They look bright and shining.
(d) This is because of a characteristic of the cat family to which they belong.
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