Various Asian countries associate aspects of the tiger with those of kings. The Hindu god Shiva, the destroyer, is depicted as wearing a tiger skin and riding a tiger – the symbol of power. The Tibetans believe they are descendants of the tiger. Among tribal groups in the shrinking jungles of Southeast Asia, who still practice animism, the tiger reigns supreme, the “grandfather of grandfathers.”

Asia is no longer a region of dark jungles and uncharted steppes. There are far more tigers now living in parks and zoos and farms than in the wild, where fewer than 5,000 Siberian tigers live in the northern steppe and some 4,500 Bengal tigers live in the wilderness of South Asia. The captive population of 12,000 tigers in the United States is estimated to rival that of those that still live in the wild. In the modern age, nature has receded and the wilderness dwindled. The once-feared man-eater is being eaten by man, its fortune thoroughly reversed: predators became preys in the popular sport of tiger hunting in 19th century colonial India, and are poached by greedy hunters in the 20th.

This is why the recent front-page news about a stray tiger read like a story from a distant past. In San Francisco a Siberian tiger escaped from its zoo confines to kill one young man and wound two others, before being shot and killed by police. That a tiger killing a man has become a source of intense global fascination tells us how far man has come in conquering the wilderness.

In East Asia, the tiger has been reduced to a mere commodity, to be farmed and poached, collected for its parts: skin, bones, dried penis, paws - and made into balms, pills, soaked in wine and sold at specialty shops and restaurants, mostly in China. China can control public information and put a man in orbit while boasting a phenomenal 9 percent economic growth rate, but it cannot control its own people's appetite for the “yi wei” or “wild taste.” In a country otherwise known for its practicality, the Chinese longing for the fanciful "yi wei," reflects a culture of nostalgia for an ancient way of life amidst a modernizing China. In East Asia, indeed, a growing army of nouveaux riches with dispensable income purchase tiger parts for as much as $100,000 dollars, enough for a poor poacher to retire in luxury.

In the West, a tiger is not eaten. But it’s robbed of its ferocity. It becomes instead a source of entertainment, jumping through hoops at circuses, or pacing nervously in its cage wild children gawk. It is also thoroughly anthropomorphized that it appears as a popular stuffed animal named Tigger, the pesky friend of Winnie the Pooh, or it’s a peddler of Kellog’s frosted flakes cereal named Tony who tells us that “They’re grrreat!” Indeed, we have overpowered the natural world to such a degree that we have managed to change the weather itself. We are now entering what the futurist writer Walt Anderson called the “Anthropocene” era. In the 21st century, there's no separation between human activities and what we used to call nature. The tiger, in the process, has been swallowed whole by humanity.

The only wilderness left is within; human beings have conquered everything but ourselves. We have decided, in the age of global warming, that we are our greatest enemy, our own stalker, and ultimately, our own destroyer. We consume all that lies in our path. A tiger escaped its confinements, jumping across a moat and over a tall fence, and killed. It managed to shock for it offers the last few glimpses of nature as it used to be - a flicker of that terrifying fire that once burned bright and deep in the human imagination.