But she knows no life outside the garden.

The spectators imagine she is going through the movements of the hunt, or that she is readying her body for survival. Paces as if she were angry, as if she were on the edge of frenzy. She understood only the look of fear in her keeper's eyes. She was a normal wild beast, whose power is dangerous, whose anger can kill, they had said. Through her half-open lids she knew they made movements around her. The keeper and his friends shot her with a gun to make her sleep. He had come into her cage as he usually did early in the morning to change her water, always at the same time of day, in the same manner, speaking softly to her, careful to make no sudden movement, keeping his distance, when suddenly she sank down, deep down into herself, the way wild animals do before they spring, and then she had risen on all her strong legs, and swiped him in one long, powerful, graceful movement across the arm. Who in his mercy forgave her mad attack, saying this was in her nature, to be cruel at a whim, to try to kill what she loves. Her keeper whom she loves, who feeds her, who would never dream of harming her, who protects her. Only once did she feel them sink into flesh. Never darted farther than twenty yards at a time. She has never in her life stretched those legs. As she moves back and forth, one may see it all: the lean frame, the muscular legs, the paw enclosing long sharp claws, the astonishing speed of her response.

Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin