The next two hours were an agonizing exercise in helplessness. The sun crept higher over the horizon, burning away the morning mist and replacing it with a thick, oppressive heat that brought the flies. They swarmed around the tiger’s face, but the massive cat didn’t even twitch his ears to brush them away. His breathing grew shallower, the intervals between each ragged gasp stretching dangerously long.
At 7:45 AM, the low rumble of a modified diesel engine finally broke the silence. Dr. Shrestha’s flatbed truck rolled into the clearing, its sides reinforced with heavy steel mesh. Three armed park rangers descended instantly, rifles raised, securing a perimeter around the clearing. Shrestha didn’t waste time. He stepped off the truck with a compressed-gas dart rifle already cradled in his arm. Because of the tiger’s compromised respiratory state, a standard dose of sedative could easily induce cardiac arrest. He had to calculate a sub-lethal cocktail on the fly.