One day the tiger went mad. Sleepy after eating a big meal, he absent-mindedly chewed on a twig from the poisonous deznal tree. He began to run frantically around the jungle, painting stripes on everything he saw. Nothing was safe from his brush. Not the trees. Not the mushrooms. Not the rocks. Even the other animals ended up as striped as the tiger himself.

All the while, the tiger cackled horribly. His laugh shook the branches of the tallest trees and sent little creatures running into the deepest corners of their dens. Even the usually unperturbable rhinoceroses were upset by the sound.

The tiger worked furiously at his painting and soon the entire jungle was striped. Then, exhausted, he fell asleep.

The next morning, when the tiger awoke, the effect of the deznal had worn off. He had a slight headache, but could not remember any of his insanity of the day before. He opened his eyes and looked around and did not recognize where he was. Everything in the jungle seemed to blend together in a striped, colorful mess.

The tiger stood and stretched and began to stroll, trying to discern something familiar in his surroundings. Strain as he might, he simply could not tell one thing from another. Several times, he bumped his nose on boulders that he mistook for leaves. Eventually, he gave up and went back to sleep, frustrated and confused.

While the tiger slept, it rained. The rain washed away all of the stripes, except for those on the tiger’s own fur, of course. Soon the jungle was back to normal. All of the animals felt as if they had just awoken from a bad dream.

The tiger, too, was relieved to be able to see that a tree was a tree and a rock was a rock. He growled, welcoming back his familiar home.

From then on, he prowled as he used to, but with his head held a little higher. He now had a new appreciation for the effectiveness of his camouflage.