Futility Closet - 279-The Champawat Tiger

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from ringing rocks to a cavalcade of prepositions. This is episode 279. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. At the turn of the 20th century, a rogue tiger terrorized the villages of Nepal and northern India. By the time British hunter Jim Corbett was called in, it had killed 434 people. In today's show, we'll describe Corbett's pursuit of the elusive cat and his enlightened efforts to address the source of the problem. We'll also revisit a Confederate spy and puzzle over a bloody ship.

Starting point is 00:00:55 In 1899 or 1900, something began to prey on the Taru people in the lowland Tarai of western Nepal, the tropical floodplain at the base of the Himalayas. The killings are poorly documented, both because the Nepalese government left them to local authorities and because, to the Taru, they represented a disturbance in the natural order, a divine punishment that the victims' families would be unwilling to speak of. But the cost was grievous. A new human victim was taken about once a week for several years, But the cost was grievous. A new human victim was taken about once a week for several years until 200 lives had been lost, an unprecedented number.

Starting point is 00:01:28 In 1903, the community organized itself to drive out the offender. After stringing goats along the valley as bait, an army of men pushed forward to flush out the killer. A thousand beaters shouted and clattered machetes, followed by hunters riding elephants and a company of Nepalese soldiers in the rear. Together, they formed a narrowing U to press the killer westward into the pass by which the Sharda River left the valley. After that, their troubles ended. The killer had passed into Kumaon in India. As word of this drama passed westward, eventually it reached the ears of a low-level railroad employee named Jim Corbett.

Starting point is 00:02:04 Corbett had a unique background. His parents were Irish, but he'd been born and raised in the district of Kumaon, and this had left him equally at home in the worlds of India and Britain. When his father had died unexpectedly, he and his brothers had been forced to scout for food in the forests, and Jim had come to know them intimately well. One day, as a small boy, he'd been stalking some jungle fowl when he looked over a plum bush and saw a tiger walk out the far side. It turned to look at him with an expression that said, Hello, kid, what the hell are you doing here?

Starting point is 00:02:31 And then walked slowly away without looking back. His experiences in the forest taught him that tigers were not the cruel and bloodthirsty creatures that the British colonial authorities made them out to be. In fact, they lived peacefully among the tens of thousands of people who worked in the forests every day. If anything, they saw humans as a nuisance to be avoided. Now, though, in 1903, a friend told him that a single tiger had killed 200 people in Nepal and that even a company of armed Gurkhas had failed to stop it. They had chased it across the river into Kumaon, and now it was wreaking havoc along the whole eastern border. Police, bounty hunters, and even army troops had failed to stop it. wreaking havoc along the whole eastern border. Police, bounty hunters, and even army troops had failed to stop it. After 20 years in the forest, Corbett may have known more about tigers than any other European in India at the time, but he had little interest

Starting point is 00:03:13 in hunting apex predators. He knew that they had a natural function in the order of the forest. In fact, they helped local farmers by keeping down the wild deer and pig populations that would otherwise feed on crops. They would turn to hunting humans only when this order was upset. Much of the fault for this must be laid to the British, who had taken up tiger hunting as a diversion, leaving many animals with disabling wounds that prevented them from hunting their natural food. An injured lion had terrorized British East Africa just five years earlier, which we covered in episode 239. Worse, the colonials had spent much of the 19th century pillaging India's natural resources, clear-cutting forests to

Starting point is 00:03:49 build railways and putting huge expanses of wild land to the plow. That reduced the tiger's natural habitat and drove some of them to look for other prey. Many Taru already knew about tigers' role in maintaining a balance in the natural world, but the British tended to view them only as trophies or pests. And now this one man-eater had come back to punish them, it seemed. In April 1907, Corbett had a visit from Ninetal's deputy commissioner, who told him that the cat's tally had risen to 434 victims. It was embarrassing the government, and he asked Corbett to put a stop to it. He accepted on two conditions. One was that all the existing bounties on the tiger must be withdrawn, and the other was that all the hunters and soldiers who were currently hunting the tiger must be called in. He wrote later,

Starting point is 00:04:31 I am sure all sportsmen share my aversion to being classed as a reward hunter and are as anxious as I to avoid being shot. It may also be that he was distancing himself from poachers and aristocrats and siding instead with the enlightened Indians among whom he'd grown up. He was hunting out of a sense of duty to his fellow Kumaonis. They needed his help for a compelling reason. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British had forbidden the Indian people to own firearms. So, far from being a savior, Corbett had the simple virtue of owning a gun. He'd been hired just in time. Just a week after Corbett accepted the assignment, a runner arrived to say that the tiger had claimed another victim, a woman, just 60 miles away in the

Starting point is 00:05:10 village of Pali. Corbett set out at once, bringing six Kumani men with him. This new killing had raised the tiger's tally to 435, and Corbett and his companions found the villagers terrified. They had not left their homes for five days and would soon run out of food. The tiger was still nearby. Its calls had been heard not a hundred yards from their houses during the last three nights, and that very day it had been seen on the cultivated land at the lower end of the village. They were afraid to take Corbett to the site of the kill, but they told him what had happened. The woman had climbed a tree to harvest oak leaves to feed the village cattle when the tiger had appeared, reared up on its hind legs to snatch her down, and carried her into the forest. The villagers had gone after it, but it charged them and they fled. Corbett spent that night outdoors under the full moon, hoping that

Starting point is 00:05:54 the tiger might approach along the road as it had been seen to do before. Five days had passed since the kill, so it would soon be hungry. But in the morning, his men found him asleep with his head on his knees. He'd seen nothing. But something must be done. The whole countryside of eastern Kumon was paralyzed. In Pali, no one would tend their fields or gather feed for the animals. Their lives were bound up with the forest. If they couldn't go abroad, they could do almost nothing. At the headman's request, Corbett stood watch over the wheat fields so that the villagers could harvest their crops and graze their animals. By evening, five large fields had been harvested, but at dark, the people locked themselves in their homes again. This is an extraordinary reign of terror for a single animal. In his book, No Beast So Fierce,

Starting point is 00:06:34 Dane Hucklebridge says that of the 42 fatal tiger attacks in the United Provinces in 1907, 39 occurred in the Kumon Division. Most of the other divisions recorded no fatal attacks at all. That means that a single cat was responsible for 93% of the fatal tiger attacks in an area larger than Wyoming. In order to track the tiger well, Corbett needed to visit the forest to examine its footprints, droppings, and urine patches. The villagers were reluctant at first to take him, but after a goat hunting expedition in which he displayed his shooting skill and produced three goats for the village, they agreed and he set out with two companions. After a kill, a tiger will spend several days near a carcass, alternately feeding and resting. It had been almost a week since the tiger had taken the woman, but if it hadn't yet set out on another hunt, it was likely still to be found near the feeding site. They went first to the oak

Starting point is 00:07:22 tree where the woman had been attacked, and Corbett found enough clues to tell him that the tiger was female, large, and healthy but aging, probably 10 or 12 years old. Wild tigers can live to 15. They followed the trail of dried blood across a ravine and into a cluster of bushes where she had fed. She'd eaten almost everything of the body, but they gathered what remained so that the family could cremate it. Corbett spent the next three days wandering through the jungles, searching for the tiger and talking to villagers. The victims were mostly women and children, which made sense as they were often the ones who went into the forest to gather firewood and animal fodder. But after three days wandering, he'd found no fresh signs of the tiger, and the people he met kept mentioning Chumpawat, a larger town 15 miles away. That seemed to be the center of the tiger's activity, so he headed there next. The tiger had evolved a hunting strategy that made her hard to

Starting point is 00:08:09 pinpoint. She never stopped moving. She would snatch a villager, devour her quickly, and then move on. The whole region was remote, and most of the locals were prohibited from owning firearms, so after an attack, a runner would have to be sent to the colonial government to seek help, and by the time the authorities sent a hunter, the tiger had finished feeding and gone. Worse, it was almost impossible to predict where she'd strike next. Her range extended over many hundreds of square miles, and her kill sites might be 20 miles apart. And she seemed to have learned never to kill twice in the same place and never to return to the site of a kill. The only clue was that she seemed to have taken Chupawat as the center of her activity. The population there was several thousand, and they had been living alongside the

Starting point is 00:08:49 tiger for the better part of four years. People on the road told him that they felt safer traveling only in groups of a dozen or more, and only during daylight hours. Corbett began to understand that he could not work alone. In order to hunt the tiger effectively, he'd have to seek the aid of the people and think as a Kumaoni would, not a Britisher. In Chumpawat, he presented himself to the tasildar, or revenue officer, who gave him a bungalow to stay in. The two were at breakfast the following morning when two breathless men arrived to say that the tiger had just killed a cow in a village 10 miles away. Corbett went there immediately but found that the cow had been killed by a leopard, not a tiger, a misfortune for the farmer, but not an uncommon occurrence. By the time he got back to the bungalow, the day had ended.

Starting point is 00:09:29 This is a bit off topic, but there's a curious sentence in his book at this point. He says, I have a tale to tell of that bungalow, but I will not tell it here, for this is a book of jungle stories, and tales beyond the laws of nature do not consort well with such stories. He never comes back to that in this story, and in fact, from what I'm able to understand, he never comes back to it at all. He never found time or remembered to go back and explain what had happened in the bungalow that night. So no one knows. What a weird tease.

Starting point is 00:09:54 Yeah, that's it. That's all I've got for you is that one sentence. Nobody has any idea? Well, what I've read about it says, I mean, there are only guesses because that's the only evidence we have. People think maybe it was a nightmare or a panic attack or a hallucination, something like that. He took it apparently for something supernatural, but that's the best guess I've been able to find. Wow.

Starting point is 00:10:11 If anyone knows more about that, write in because I'd love to know. Anyway, his chance came the next morning. He was talking to the Tassildar when a runner arrived from a nearby village shouting, Come quickly, Saib. The man-eater has just killed a girl. This would be the tiger's 436th victim. Corbett snatched up his rifle and set out with the tasildar and the messenger for the village, which was just a few miles outside Chumpawat. There, the villagers told them a familiar story. A small group had been gathering firewood in a nearby stand of oak trees when the tiger had

Starting point is 00:10:39 appeared and snatched the girl. Corbett told them to stay where they were and went to the site, which was marked by a pool of blood and a broken necklace. He followed the trail into the trees for half a mile, coming occasionally upon pieces of the girl's clothing and strands of her hair. He was stopped momentarily at a bed of nettles when a patwari, or low-level village official, arrived, sent by the Tassildar, but clearly not happy about it. Corbett ordered him to remove his clumsy boots and to watch the rear, and the two of them began to follow the blood trail, which now turned sharply to the left and descended to a steep water course, which it appeared the tiger had followed with some difficulty. The patuari was continually tugging on Corbett's sleeve, sure he'd heard something. Corbett didn't trust guns in the

Starting point is 00:11:18 hands of inexperienced men, and he didn't want to shoot another man by accident, so he ordered the patuari to climb a 30-foot spire of rock and wait for him there. Then he went on alone. The water course continued for another hundred yards and ended in a stone hollow with a pool of water in its center. She must have been feeding here when he disturbed her. There was no sign of the cat, but some of the girl's remains were here. As he was looking at them, he was suddenly overcome by a feeling of great danger and spun and raised his gun at the 15-foot bank behind him. There was no sign of the tigress, but a small trickle of earth was dropping down the bank. She had been stalking him from behind. With a running start, he clambered up the bank after her. The plants at the top were still

Starting point is 00:11:58 slowly regaining their upright position. He followed her trail to an overhanging rock, where she must have left her kill to approach him. But now she had taken it up again and carried it into a wilderness of rocks crossed by cracks and chasms that made the going slow and perilous. As he made his way into it, the tigress kept ahead of him, stopping periodically to continue her meal. He came upon a dozen places where she had rested. She must have been followed like this many times in her long career, but Corbett was unusually persistent, and she began to show her resentment by sending back growls as the two of them moved forward. Corbett wrote later, I cannot expect you who read this at your fireside to appreciate my feelings at the time. The sound

Starting point is 00:12:34 of the growling and the expectation of an attack terrified me at the same time as it gave me hope. If the tigress lost her temper sufficiently to launch an attack, it would not only give me an opportunity of accomplishing the object for which I had come, but it would enable me to get even with her for all the pain and suffering she had caused. The growling stopped when she saw that she wasn't scaring him off. He'd now been on her trail for four hours and had got close enough at times to see the undergrowth moving, but he'd never caught sight of her. He realized he would have to stop if he were to reach the village again by dark. He made his way back to his companion, who was still waiting atop the spire of rock. As the man retrieved his boots, Corbett considered his options.

Starting point is 00:13:10 The tigress would finish her kill during the night, and then she'd lie up among the rocks the following day. He couldn't hope to stalk her effectively alone on the ground, and if he disturbed her without getting a clear shot, she might disappear altogether. But the landscape before him suggested a plan. It was a natural amphitheater of hills crossed by a stream that passed into a narrow gorge to the north. He could use the same technique that had driven the tigers out of Nepal. An advancing group of people making a great noise should drive the tiger across the valley and into the gorge.

Starting point is 00:13:38 And now, instead of finding freedom there, she would find Corbett waiting for her. Back at the village, he explained his plan to the Tassildar and asked him to gather as many men as he could and to meet him the next morning at the tree where the girl had been killed. The Tassildar brought 298 men. He had let it be known that he'd turned a blind eye to unlicensed firearms and would even provide ammunition. Back at the valley, Corbett arranged the villagers along a ridge and told them to begin making noise when they saw him wave his handkerchief. The Tassildar took up a position on the opposite side of the valley, and Corbett went to the mouth of the gorge, hiding behind some grass and facing the beaters on the opposite hillside.

Starting point is 00:14:14 He did not have long to wait. Shortly after the beaters had started their din, the tiger came bounding down a slope about 300 yards away, headed for the gorge, as he'd hoped. But she'd come only a short distance when the Tassildar fired twice at her, and at the sound she reversed quickly and went back the way she had come. Corbett sent a bullet after her, but she vanished, and his heart suddenly sank. She was now headed toward the men on the hill, who did not know she was coming. They were saved by an odd chance. On hearing the three shots that had been fired, those men now assumed the tiger had been killed, and began to celebrate with a cacophony of shouts and shots. The tiger must have reversed again, for without warning she broke cover on Corbett's left and bounded over the stream coming straight for him.

Starting point is 00:14:53 He had only two cartridges left. He leveled his rifle and fired, hitting her twice. She flinched but stood her ground, ears laid flat and teeth bared. He tried to think what to do when she charged. But she didn't. She turned very slowly, crossed the stream, climbed onto a narrow ledge, and began to attack a bush growing there. Corbett shouted to the Tassildar to bring him his gun. He couldn't hear the reply, so in desperation he threw down his rifle, sprinted to the hill, grabbed the gun out of the Tassildar's hands, and raced back. The tiger came forward to meet him. Twenty feet from her, he raised the gun clumsily and fired. She lurched forward and lay still. He found afterward that the upper and lower canine teeth on her right side were broken, the result of a hunter's bullet

Starting point is 00:15:36 eight years earlier in Nepal. She had been hunting people to stay alive. With that injury, she could no longer hunt her natural prey. The tiger's death was not an end, but a beginning. In the decades that followed, the same factors that had produced the Chumpahuit man-eater drove dozens of additional cats to hunt humans. Between 1906 and 1941, Corbett was called on to track down and shoot almost 50 cats that together had killed some 2,000 people. He agreed to do this, but only if the cat had been certified as a serial man-eater. In his 1944 memoir, he called the tiger a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage

Starting point is 00:16:11 and emphasized that only unusual factors such as injury might lead it to attack humans. The book was translated into 27 languages and sold more than half a million copies in its first two years in print, but the tiger's decline continued. In 1907, when Corbett killed the Chumpawat, there were probably 100,000 tigers remaining in the wild. By 1946, he estimated there were fewer than 4,000. So for the last two decades of his life, he dedicated himself to preserving Indian wildlife, and in particular, the Bengal tiger. He actively lobbied the colonial government to protect the tiger and played a crucial role in establishing India's first national park, which in the year after his death, 1956, was renamed Jim Corbett National Park. Despite the best efforts of conservationists, the number of wild tigers in the world declined every year in the 20th century. It reversed only in 2016 and stands today at just under 4,000.

Starting point is 00:17:21 Some of our listeners wrote to let us know that they were unhappy with our handling of the story in episode 276 of Rose O'Neill Greenhow, who ran a Confederate spy ring in Washington, D.C. at the start of the American Civil War. They felt that we shouldn't have praised Greenhow without acknowledging that she was fighting to defend the institution of slavery. For example, Simone wrote, I understand that you cover interesting subject matter regardless of the moral values of the person it's regarding. I did find the subject interesting, but what bothered me was that the woman in question was fighting for slavery, for keeping human beings as property, and you never acknowledged this. Instead, you praised her courage and resourcefulness. I have no doubt that you are upstanding people who oppose the injustice of the Confederacy,

Starting point is 00:17:57 but I'd like it if you acknowledge that you made mistakes in this episode and will make sure to discuss these sorts of topics with more sensitivity, because although the vile institution of slavery is over, its legacy continues. As fellow history enthusiasts, I'm sure you too acknowledge that the past is never truly in the past. I hope you will take what I am saying into account and be more careful in the future. She's right, and I'm sorry to have offended anyone. Rose Greenhouse supported the Confederacy because she wanted to preserve the Southern way of life, including slavery. She'd been born to a wealthy slave-owning family, and she held racist views. In the episode, I was focused on her personal story without being sensitive to its larger context. We typically focus on personal stories. The difference here is that Greenhow was actively

Starting point is 00:18:38 promoting a reprehensible cause, which is something that our other subjects haven't done. I didn't acknowledge that, and I should have. I was attracted to her story because she was a woman who transcended the cultural expectations of her time, and I try to favor stories about women because they're so underrepresented in history. But my writing didn't make that clear and could have sounded as if I were praising, or at least excusing, her support for the Confederacy. That's my fault, and I should have been clearer. Once we realized that we hadn't handled the topic very well and that it was upsetting some people, we started a public discussion in our Patreon forum, acknowledging the problem and suggesting some possible options, such as deleting the entire episode or trying to make other edits or amendments to it.

Starting point is 00:19:17 I'll put links to two posts in the show notes. They're public posts, so anyone can read or comment on them. The clear consensus was that we should keep the episode but make some amendments to it. We changed the episode title and introduction and inserted a notice acknowledging the objections that we had treated Greenhow too sympathetically, and we explained that we'd be discussing all this in episode 279, which is what you're listening to now. Beyond the objections, several listeners made some very thoughtful comments, and we thought it might be valuable to discuss some of those here. Again, you can see the whole discussion on the Patreon page. Paola Cognini wrote, I think there is a danger in confusing morality and personal qualities. In this story, the Confederate is bright, resourceful, and bold. The Unionists are,

Starting point is 00:19:57 at first, foolish, careless, and probably sexist. This doesn't alter the fact that she supported a despicable dehumanizing regime while they fought against it. If we assume that being morally wrong always means being craven, stupid, petty, and uninspiring, then we may think that someone bright, gallant, and fearless must be morally in the right. We can also reject a just movement because we perceive that their proponents have personal flaws. There were brave, charming Nazis. There were cruel and gormless anti-fascists. There were brave, charming Nazis. There were cruel and gormless anti-fascists.

Starting point is 00:20:28 Reporting this historical fact in no way absolves the Nazis' monstrous acts or taints the moral value of anti-fascism. Quite the opposite. It can be a good vaccine against this unhelpful conflation. I think that's true. It's tempting to believe that no one who supports a bad cause can have admirable qualities, but of course they can, just as people who fight for justice have flaws. Anne Blackman, who wrote the modern magisterial biography of Greenhow, wrote, Even those of us who could never accept her politics cannot help but be amazed at her

Starting point is 00:20:51 resilience and zeal. Rose Greenhow was a woman of courage, imagination, and conviction who took risks, enormous risks, for the Confederate cause in a war for which she was willing to give her life and did. Yeah, that is an interesting point, that we can condemn someone's politics, but still be kind of impressed by some of their actions. Yeah, exactly. Rachel Ford wrote, Personally, I found it odd that the story was presented as neutrally as it was, when it seemed to me more like the story of a resourceful and cunning criminal,

Starting point is 00:21:19 like others presented throughout the Futility Closet oeuvre. That Rose Greenhow considered herself a patriot is not evidence of innocence in actions that resulted in violence, death, and destruction, which they certainly did, but it also doesn't make her efforts less interesting to learn about. I don't feel that stories about murderers, cannibals, and thieves are improper topics for Futility Closet stories, so Confederate spies aren't either, as long as it's clear their actions against human flourishing are no more celebrated than those of other villains. I think that's a good point. When I was writing the Greenhow episode, I thought of it as a story like the others we've done, many of which were about

Starting point is 00:21:51 criminals and miscreants. In those cases, I generally trust a listener to see that the misdeeds are wrong. I write these stories from the subject's point of view, and Rose Greenhow saw herself as fighting against Northern oppression, which she thought made her cause just. But I didn't explain what her cause was, and making her sound too much like a hero could suggest we were endorsing her politics, which I hadn't intended or even considered. And I guess that is something that is pretty unique about this story that we really didn't think about enough, which was in the past when we've covered people who've behaved reprehensibly, they were doing it for their own personal reasons, for their own personal gain.

Starting point is 00:22:27 And she is, I think, the first person we've covered who was actually fighting for a reprehensible cause. And we just didn't make that distinction. Yeah, a train robber isn't advancing the cause of train robbery. He's just robbing a train. Joshua Adelson wrote, A secondary but important theme is the miscalculation of a woman's cunning and ability based purely on the fact that she is a woman. While this is surely a product of the historical period in which the episode occurred, we cannot claim that our society today is entirely unburdened by similar attitudes.

Starting point is 00:22:57 That's one of the things that drew me to the story when a listener recommended it. Whatever else we can say about her, Greenhow was a remarkable woman doing historically important things. In fact, while she was running the spy ring, she was a single mother to a young daughter. And Josh is right. That's one of the things that led the North to underestimate her, at least at first. Finally, Elliot Kendall wrote, I know you try to keep contemporary politics out of the show, and sadly, whether or not the Confederacy were the bad guys in the Civil War is still a contemporary issue. It seems to me that you wouldn't run a piece about a particularly interesting story about the exploits of a Waffen-SS officer, but probably a story about a Genghis Khan,

Starting point is 00:23:31 by many accounts a brutal and genocidal warlord, would be okay. There must be a place to draw the line, but I'm not sure where it should be. And I agree that's tricky. Over the years, listeners have thanked us for not wading into contemporary politics, and I don't consider them when picking topics. But it does seem that some topics have more modern resonances than others, Thanks again to everyone who wrote in about this. We always appreciate getting feedback about our show, so if you have any that you'd like to share, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:24:16 It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange-sounding situation, and I have to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Stephen Jones. There is blood on the deck of a ship. Why? That's it?

Starting point is 00:24:30 That's all I get? That's all you get. Oh, my gosh. Okay. All right. By a ship, do you mean a seaworthy vessel that people would travel on? No. Aha.

Starting point is 00:24:43 There's blood on the deck of a ship. By a ship, do you mean any kind of means of transportation? No. No. Deck of a ship. Is this some kind of a decorative item? I'll say yes. Like a ship in a bottle? No. So is this something that would, say, fit inside a room in your house?

Starting point is 00:25:11 Yes. It's small enough to fit inside a room? Yes. And you would use it primarily as a decorative item? Yes. There's blood on the deck of a ship. By deck, do you mean a part of a ship, like a floor kind of part of a ship? Yes.

Starting point is 00:25:43 Okay, but not a transportation type of ship. Yes, I'm splitting hairs here. But I mean, like deck could also mean like a deck of cards. Oh, right. Or deck could have like a very different meaning altogether. You can have a tape deck. So I'm trying to get by deck, do you mean a part of whatever this ship is that you're referring to as opposed to a different meaning of the word deck altogether? Yes. Okay. As I understand it, yes. ship is that you're referring to as opposed to a different meaning of the word deck altogether yes okay as i understand you yes so you have an item that is an item of decoration that you are calling a ship and some part of that item has a blood on it that's correct okay um is the blood

Starting point is 00:26:20 on it deliberately uh yes i guess you would say so okay so somebody has deliberately put blood on it deliberately? Yes, I guess you would say so. Okay. So somebody has deliberately put blood on this thing. Well. No. Or some facsimile of blood. No, it's real blood. It's real blood. And it was... The person's goal was not

Starting point is 00:26:44 to put blood on the deck of the ship. Okay. Because, I mean, I don't know. If they're recreating a battle scene or something, they might deliberately put blood on this decorative item. Yeah, no, that wasn't the purpose. That wasn't the aim of the person who did it. Would you say that this is some kind of a prop? No.

Starting point is 00:27:01 As opposed to... Okay, so it's... Would you... Is this in someone's house this ship is this a specific item that you are rethinking of like a very specific item one specific item in the world yes no no just sort of abstractly one of these kinds of things okay okay so Okay. So if I ask you, is this ship in someone's house, is that a question that is sensible and you can answer or no? No, it's sort of more abstract than that. More abstract than that.

Starting point is 00:27:35 I'm not thinking of one particular instance. You're not thinking of one particular instance? I'm not thinking of any instance at all because I have no idea what's going on. I've still lost it. What kind of ship this would be? The ship is a decorative item. Yeah. Okay. Is it a smaller version of an object that would normally be used for transportation? I'll say yes, but I don't want to mislead you.

Starting point is 00:27:58 Okay. So this is, would you call it a facsimile of something? Yes. Okay. Is this facsimile of a seagoing vessel? Yes. Okay. So by ship, you actually mean like a large boat.

Starting point is 00:28:14 Yes. Except that this is a small boat. Yes. Okay. And it's not a specific one. And it's not like a ship in a bottle. But would you normally find this type of object in someone's house? Not normally.

Starting point is 00:28:31 I wouldn't say no. Would you normally find it in some other specific kind of building that I could name, like a school or a hospital or a jail or something like that? No. No. I'm trying to think of a hint. Would you normally find this out of doors? I wouldn't say yes, no.

Starting point is 00:28:47 So you would normally find it inside something? Neither. Neither. It's not more likely in or out. Okay. Is this like a... That doesn't make sense. If it's a facsimile of like a boat, then it can't be like just an abstract concept of a ship.

Starting point is 00:29:04 No. But it's not... Is this something like I could physically touch as opposed to like a hologram or a... Yes, it is. Is it a three-dimensional ship as opposed to like a two-dimensional painting or drawing? No, it's not three-dimensional. So it is two-dimensional.

Starting point is 00:29:22 Yep. So is it like a drawing or a painting or... Something like that. Is it inside of another object like a book or... No. But you wouldn't call it a painting or a drawing. Neither of those words would be correct. Not quite.

Starting point is 00:29:37 The presence of the blood itself is a clue. Well, sure. If it was like a part of a book and then you got a paper cut or something i don't know um um the presence of the blood okay is this a this is a person's blood yes that you sort of said it was put on there deliberately but then you sort of but but not not somehow the image of the ship was put in place deliberately, but the point of it wasn't to draw blood. The blood was sort of a byproduct. You're closer than you think.

Starting point is 00:30:16 Did somebody in manipulating this ship hurt themselves, you say or had an accident the caused blood no well yes the is is this is this used for some kind of medical procedure in some way no but you're very close the blood the bleeding came about as a result of putting the ship in its place. Where it is now. Is this some kind of object that is used to deliberately draw blood? No, that's not the purpose. It's not the purpose. But if... How can I not give this away?

Starting point is 00:30:56 Oh, is it like on a knife? No. No. Is it on an object? Is the ship on an object that is sharp? No. No. Is it on an object? Is the ship on an object that is sharp? No. Or used for medical or health reasons? No. You're dancing all around it, though.

Starting point is 00:31:15 Blood was drawn in putting the ship in its current place. But the ship isn't on a sharp object. No. The ship is a representation, it's like, I guess, a drawing of a ship.

Starting point is 00:31:30 Right, that's what I like, like if it's etched on a knife or something, right? And then you'd cut yourself on the knife, but it's not that. Is this, is this, like I think of ships in the bottle or something, but is this something, like I don't normally think of a ship etched on a knife.

Starting point is 00:31:45 I mean, is this something more like a ship on a knife that it's not like a common thing to have a ship on? No, this is... Or is this more common? This is pretty common. But is a ship on a bottle? Something glass? It's on a...

Starting point is 00:31:56 Anything glass? It's... Blood came from the surface where the ship was drawn. But the surface isn't sharp. No. And it's not isn't sharp. No. And it's not made of glass. No, it's alive. It's a living surface. A drawing of a ship or an image of a ship was rendered on a

Starting point is 00:32:15 living surface and that drew blood. And this isn't uncommon? No, this is pretty common. Really? You might have one of these. You might choose to have an image of a ship made on... On something alive.

Starting point is 00:32:33 On your own person. Like a tattoo? Yes. Oh, I was like trying to think of me. I don't actually have any tattoos. But no, Stephen says because the ship is a tattoo. Okay. If you'd like to send in a puzzle for us to try,

Starting point is 00:32:53 you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's our show for today, in which I apparently could not remember the existence of tattoos. If you would like to become one of our wonderful patrons who help support this show and get bonus content like outtakes, extralateral thinking puzzles, more discussions on some of the stories, and peeks behind the scenes of the show, please see our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:33:25 And maybe if we get up to a thousand patrons, I will actually consider getting a tattoo. While you're at our site, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 quirky curiosities. Check out the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All our music was written and performed by my amazing brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 279-The Champawat Tiger

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