Merry Christmas, Bloody Mary

Sooyong Park, a researcher and filmmaker, spent more than 15 years observing Siberian tigers in the Ussuri region.

Park dug underground bunkers about the size of a grave, which he dubbed "hotels," and lived in them for months at a time in order to watch these great animals.

The most stunning tiger was Bloody Mary, an adult female who was astonishingly clever and the perfect hunter.

In the following excerpt, Park got as close to Bloody Mary as he ever would while she was alive.

At some point, a few mice began frequenting the hotel. There were four of them one day, and one was a bit large. They appeared to be a family of three siblings and their mother. They were striped field mice, golden brown with black stripes running down their backs.

Unlike most rodents, field mice don't store food for the winter and must instead resort to searching for food in the freezing cold. The warmth of the bunker and the smell of food must have lured them in from the frozen ground—or perhaps I was the one invading striped field mouse territory.

I started to observe and record the mice's behavior. The largest of the four bored a hole in the wall and peeked out. The others were busy ripping bits off the blankets we had used to painstakingly line the bunker walls and were carrying them back to their nest. The large one climbed down the wall. It sniffed and examined the back shelf where the books and video cables were. Mice are very fond of chewing on video cables. I suppose it's nice to have some soft plastic after gnawing on hard wood.

The large mouse crawled along the wall, hopped onto the side shelf, and beelined for the spot where the green tea, dried seaweed, and meat jerkies were stored. She had a keen sense of smell. The lids were shut, so she started to chew her way into the containers.

I reached out and offered her a bit of rice ball. She darted back about a meter, then turned to look at it. After assessing the situation, she returned to eat the rice ball. The others hesitated for a moment before they came crawling up as well. They were brazen. The mice already knew where everything was located inside the bunker. Instead of wandering around in search of what they needed, they went straight to the spot where they knew they would find what they were looking for. When they were hungry, they went to the side shelf where the food was. When they were thirsty, they crawled under the bed where the water was stored, and when they wanted to grind their teeth, they climbed onto the back shelf where the video cables were. People think of apes and dolphins when they think of the most intelligent animals, but I think rodents might be pretty smart, too.

The striped field mice began to play, but froze when they noticed me looking at them. They observed my pupils, movement, and energy and tried to predict my next move. Was I going to get up? If I stayed still, they resumed their fun. They ran around the bunker and dove off the shelves onto the soft goose-down sleeping bag. They were the bunker comedy routine. Entertainment. A source of comfort through the tedium of the stakeout.

Yet the mice were getting too bold. They were fearless.

To film tigers and ungulates, I have been installing cameras in the Ussuri forest for nearly ten years. The tigers found twenty-three of the cameras I'd fastidiously hidden, and destroyed them. I rubbed deer droppings on the small cameras, hoping to mask the metal scent, but they still managed to find and destroy nearly all of them. The act of destruction was never caught on tape, only the sound, because all the cameras were attacked from behind. The dark lens of the camera must have looked like a gun barrel to the tigers. The more experienced tigers were more adept at finding the cameras than the young ones, but all tigers, newly independent or mature, dismantled the cameras they found from the back. This is proof that mothers educate their young about guns from early on.

We also found that male tigers were more likely to destroy cameras than female tigers—males tended to break cameras, whereas females preferred to avoid them. For the females that did destroy cameras, two out of three were accompanied by their cubs. While it's hard to confirm on such a small sample size, it seems females traveling with their cubs tend to be more sensitive to danger and prefer to preemptively remove things that may pose a threat to their offspring.

Tigers also destroyed sensors installed to trigger hidden cameras. There were about as many broken sensors as broken cameras, but a slightly different group of tigers were involved. Unlike cameras, sensors are made of plastic and therefore don't smell like metal, and they're less threatening to tigers because they don't have dark lenses that resemble gun barrels. This may have been why a larger percentage of females and young male tigers broke the sensors.

The safest bet with strange objects in the forest is to do as female tigers do and avoid them. Young tigers don't have the experience to deal with strange objects when they encounter them, so they are most vulnerable. Safety awareness is most acute in mature females, followed by mature males, young females, and young males.

It was still snowing two days later—a snowy kingdom as far as the eye could see. I kept watching the snow fall on the mountains as I waited for the tigers. I thought I saw the orange fur of a tiger knocking snow off the bushes as it emerged, but it was just more snow blurring the line between ground and sky as it fell.

"This is Diplyak. This is Diplyak. Nothing to report. Merry Christmas!" "This is Petrova. Tiger tracks found between the Deer Valley and the Coastal Ridge. Be advised. A merry Christmas to you, too!"

I was communicating with Petrova Lodge, the location of one of our base camps. The tracks of three tigers had been found inland two days earlier, thirty kilometers northwest of the Petrova coast. They must be White Moon, White Snow, and White Sky. It was a day's trip from there to here for them, but I couldn't predict when they would arrive. What were the tiger siblings up to in the snowy forest? What were my kids up to? When I was home, I longed for the mountains. When I was in the mountains, I was homesick. I had been repeating this pattern for fifteen years. I was weary.

The snow stopped and the clouds parted as evening fell. It had been a few days since the winter solstice, and the days were very short. Between 6:30 and 6:40 in the evening, the camera hit its exposure limit. I was debating whether I should swap in the night lens, hoping to hold out just a little longer, when I saw the hazy silhouette of a large animal in the distance. It was 6:43 p.m., right after the day lens stopped being usable. I felt around the dark bunker and quietly put in the night lens. Thanks to all the practice, I was used to handling equipment in the dark. I turned the camera on and unlocked the tripod joints. The viewfinder emitted a foggy light as it came on. I panned the camera to get the angle as quickly as possible without catching the tiger's attention.

Two pairs of eyes flashed in the dark, and I saw stripes. A brawny tiger was casting his gaze around. I looked straight at him without hitting the record button. The moment he turned to look at the mountains, I hit record. I heard the quiet whirr of the tape locking in place and starting to turn. The sound seemed exceptionally loud. I slowly zoomed in and found the focus. The image of the tiger became clearer. It was White Sky. He was still gazing back at the mountains.

White Sky headed in the direction he was looking. I followed him by moving the frame diagonally. And then another tiger entered the frame. It nuzzled against White Sky's neck and snuffled affectionately. White Sky caressed the other tiger's neck with his tail and walked off again. Yet another tiger came into the frame before long. All three rubbed noses and nuzzled against each other in greeting, congregating under the full moon. It was White Moon, White Snow, and White Sky, five days after their tracks had been found thirty kilometers inland. They must have followed the deer here. It was time for them to become independent, but these siblings were still traveling together. They played together, nudging each other, snapping at each other's tails, and frolicking.

From behind the bunker, I heard footsteps approaching, crunching on snow. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The heavy sound of a large cat's soft paws on snow. . . Bloody Mary? The crunching got closer and closer until it moved on top of the bunker roof. The roof creaked. My heart began to race and I couldn't breathe. Calm down. Calm down.

It all happened so fast that my heart was ready to jump out of my chest, and I was dizzy in spite of my effort to calm myself. Bloody Mary was right above my head. One, two, three, four. . . Thirty seconds went by. It felt like an eternity. Bloody Mary suddenly leapt over the entrance of the bunker, and the camera caught her as she walked into the thicket, brushing snow off the lower branches in her wake. With her tail held straight up to avoid scratching it on the branches, her body slinked from side to side as she walked confidently up to her cubs. Bloody Mary had followed the deer that had passed through in the morning. I chastised myself once again for building a bunker right in the middle of a deer path.

I caught all four tigers in the frame. As I guessed, it was Bloody Mary, the matron of the Basin of Skeletons. She had finally appeared before me. Her long tail dangled behind her with just the tip turned up like a snake's head. Her torso was slender and firm, her shoulder blades jutted out in a sharp angle, and her strong head was held up high. She was tidy, disciplined, and clean. I felt power and unyielding will in her. She was calm and reserved, like a fighter who calculated her every move to protect herself and her family in the brutal struggle for survival. She radiated a wildness that could only come from fighting through life alone, without relying on anyone else.

The cubs snuffled affectionately at their mother as they nuzzled against her neck. But Bloody Mary did not reciprocate. She must have sensed that something was amiss, for she was busy sniffing and surveying the area. I carefully zoomed in until Bloody Mary's face filled the frame. The look on her face was not one of a loving mother. She was on edge, full of suspicion and caution.

She was looking around when, suddenly, she spotted the lens. The lens froze and Bloody Mary froze as well, but she did not take her eyes off of it. Her gaze stayed riveted, as if glued. My heart rate suddenly spiked. I had been too careless in my excitement at seeing Bloody Mary for the first time. I had forgotten that she was an exceptional mother. I should have been more careful with a veteran like her.

With her glare fixed on the camera lens, Bloody Mary slowly turned her body around. She had the look of a mother tiger who would take on the entire world for the sake of her cubs. Her long, serpentine tail held straight up, she walked through the frosty thicket, straight toward me. A pile of snow on the elm branch above the bunker plopped down as the wind blew. She came closer, her eyes staring straight at the lens. The close-up image of her in the viewfinder turned blurry and then disappeared altogether.

I couldn't see the look in her eyes anymore. I couldn't zoom out either. I held my breath and stayed very still.

The crunch crunch of her paws on snow got closer. My blood was freezing in my veins. I wondered if I should retract my lens right then, and realized that it was already too late for that. If I got caught like this, everything would go to waste. The bunker would be destroyed and my life would be in danger. With my left hand on the focus ring of the lens jutting out through three layers of blankets, and my right hand on the tripod handle inside the bunker, I held my breath. I left everything to fate and hoped she would pass me by.

Crunch. Crunch. Bloody Mary continued toward the entrance. One, two, three,four steps. Stop. She was on the left side of the lens. Bloody Mary sniffed the lens from the left and right. I hadtaken off my left glove to manipulate the sensitive focus ring, andnow I felt Bloody Mary's warm breath on the back of my left hand.

I was so tense my back was about to break, and my skin was covered in goosebumps. Her breath and her stiff whiskers grazed theback of my left hand. The back of my hand spasmed. And then her strong front paw struck the camera lens. The lens bent and the microphone snapped.

She let out an indescribable, blood-curdling growl, and the attack began. She caught the zoom cable that was dragged out with the lens when it fell off and yanked at it. The copper wire inside the cable cut the back of my right hand as the cable snapped. A sharp pain shot through my body. Bloody Mary clawed off the camouflage shrubs at the entrance and started to rip off the wooden paneling. The cubs rushed to her side. They used their spadelike front paws to dig up the soil around my hideout. Small holes appeared in the corner of the bunker. They stuck their noses in the holes and sniffed. I heard the raspy breath of a tiger right by my ear.

One tiger got on the roof of the bunker. Then another. Soon, I heard the sound of the pine boards snapping. The tigers were digging up the earth on the top of the bunker. I broke out into a cold sweat and trembled all over. Of the three layers of blankets at the entrance, one had already been ripped off and the second was about to come down as well. The roof bent and started to cave.

The four tigers did their worst while the helpless man sat paralyzed in a ditch. A third tiger climbed on top of the bunker, and the roof broke with a loud crash. Frozen dirt and clumps of snow fell into the bunker along with a tiger's back foot. My mind went blank. The tiger must have been equally stunned that its foot had fallen into a dark hole, for it kicked frantically to pull itself out. The kicking broke the pine board a second time, and I heard the tigers running away.

Once the paw retreated from the bunker, I suddenly snapped out of it. I thought about getting up to push the pine board back into place, but I stopped. As hard as it was, I had to keep my wits about me to the end, and I sensed that this was not over yet. The tigers were quiet. So determined just moments ago to scratch and tear and sniff and find out what was in the ground, they had instantly grown still. The footsteps grew distant and then ceased altogether. Silence had returned. Not a mouse in sight. Only the occasional plop of snow falling from branches.

This is an excerpt from Great Soul of Siberia by Sooyong Park, on sale November 8. It has been condensed and edited.