Q147: An attempted killing

Tintin’s rather pointless slaughter of animals throughout Tintin in the Congo is well known, and was apparently something Hergé later regretted having Tintin do. In the later books, Tintin generally only attacks or kills animals that are attacking or threatening him or his friends at the time.

But in which book (other than Congo) do we see Tintin attempting to kill an animal which - at the time he’s trying to kill it - seems to present no threat to him or any other person (and offers no source of food)?

Naming the book and giving a description of the scene will suffice.

Time for a clue.

Tintin arguably has psychological reasons for fearing the creature he tries to kill, following an optical illusion and a related dream sequence earlier in the book. And although (as I said) the animal that Tintin tries to kill appears to be entirely harmless at the time of Tintin's unprovoked attempt on its life, it does unexpectedly become very dangerous shortly afterwards, in a way that makes the earlier optical illusion and dream sequence seem strangely prophetic!

Is it the spider that Tintin finds in the box of emergency rations while he's stuck on the meteorite island, which later mutates into a giant spider in "The Shooting Star" on page 50 in panels 6 and 7.

Well done, doubleT, you've got it!

Tintin chases the spider with his foot raised and is clearly attempting to squash it (with Snowy's encouragement). As a child, this bothered me a bit (probably because we were brought up not to randomly squash spiders and beetles or pull wings off craneflies etc). It always seemed quite an un-Tintin thing to do (compared to the way he carefully returns the electric eel to the water in Picaros, for instance).

Of course, given what happens to the spider overnight, it would have been better for Tintin if he had succeeded in squashing it. But there's no way Tintin could have known this at the time he was trying to do so. And indeed maybe the only reason the giant spider attacks Tintin is that it recognises him as the human who tried to squash it the evening before! If that's the case, Tintin seems to learn his lesson from this encounter, as I don't think we ever again see him attempting to kill another animal for no good reason. (It's Rastapopoulos who goes in for attempted spider-squashing in future!)

Anyway, a point to you, doubleT, and over to you for the next question.

As doubleT hasn't posted a question within the allotted time, the next question is open to anyone to set.

Ed