Imagine, you’re out for a walk in a relatively secluded place in the spring, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster indulges his whimsy and touches you with one of His Noodly Appendages and transforms you into a tiger. A healthy adult tiger in your prime. Fortunately you retain your intelligence. Equally fortunately, the FSM may be whimsical but is not vindictive, so you gain basic tiger skills like hunting and hiding.
What do you do now?
For myself, I think I’d try to avoid humans as long as possible and try to work my way south to one of the larger English forests and quietly live out my days. Hopefully I’d find a discarded map to show me the way.
I find a human housing development, and I ROAR – in S.O.S. pattern.
While I’m waiting for people to come, I write a message in the mud. “I am a Talking Tiger.” (Not actually true, but it’s the quickest way I can think of to put the message over.)
I’ll hang out with 3 other tiger pals. We’ll steal Little Black Sambo’s clothes and fight over who looks best in them. Then we’ll chase each other around a tree endlessly until we are all reduced to butter and Sambo’s mother uses us to butter their pancakes. :o
Getting turned into a tiger is one of this generations biggest fears after death, public speaking and getting gum stuck in your hair.
I would be worried about getting shot as a wild animal so I’d take the Yogi Bear route. I’d put on my trench coat, hat and dark glasses. I’d walk upright with a swagger and try to act like one cool cat. That’s the part that worries me the most, I’m not that cool.
This is the story from an old children’s book called Little Black Sambo. It was popular back in the '60s when I was a child. But with the dawning of the racial equality movement, it was banned as the name “Sambo” was considered to be a racial slur when referring to dark-skinned people from the continent of India.
Really too bad, though, because it was a great children’s story.
