Black and grey realism tattoo of a tiger's face above a partly visible ape, with grass at the top, on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic tiger portrait with grass and ape on a limb

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A large realistic tiger face looks forward, with detailed fur, striped markings and shaded eyes. Grass and foliage fill the top of the piece, and the lower edge shows a partly visible ape face. The work is shaded in black and grey on a curved limb, with the tiger filling the centre of the frame.

Realism Other Tiger Grass Foliage Animal portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tiger came ashore at Scarrow Head the week the menagerie ship went onto the rocks in fog. Its crate had split open on the slipway, and the animal walked up through the bracken as if it had always known the way. Mags Pellow, who kept the light there, found it lying in the long grass at dusk, its head level with her knee and its eyes already fixed on the lamp room window. She did not run. She fetched the salt mutton from the pantry and set it down on the flat stone by the wall, and then she went up the tower to light the wick, because the boats still needed it.

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Every evening after that the tiger was there before she was. It never came nearer than the wall, and it never once took its eyes off the glass. Its stripes ran into the shadows of the grass so that, from the lantern room, Mags could never be sure where the animal ended and the dark began. The gorilla had come off the same ship in a crate with iron bands, and it was too frightened to be let out, so she kept it in the cart shed and taught it to hold the oil can while she trimmed the wick. It learned quickly. It was the only thing on the headland that was ever grateful for the work.

In October the men from the mainland came out with rifles and a net. They stood at the gate with their hats in their hands and said the animal was a danger to the cattle and the children at Harrow farm. Mags told them the lamp needed trimming before dark and they could come back at dawn. They laughed, but they waited, and while they waited the tiger rose out of the grass, stretched until its spine showed, and walked to the very edge of the cliff. It looked back at the light for a long time. Then it went down into the fog and was not seen again.

On clear nights the fishing boats still steer by the light at Scarrow Head. If they come in close enough, the men say, they can see two pairs of eyes shining in the grass beneath the tower, one pair low and patient and the other very wary of the sea.