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When I first heard about the attack at the San Francisco Zoo, I felt strangely vindicated to learn that a Siberian tiger had been involved. I am irrationally prejudiced when it comes to big cats: I don't like Siberians. Of all the tigers, lions, jaguars, and other exotic animals I have known in my day — and I grew up on a wild animal farm, so I have known quite a few — the only ones that truly frightened me were a chimpanzee named Lolita and a pair of Siberians (they're known as Amurs now) that lived in an old shed about 100 feet from my front door.
When I read in March that two chimps from a California primate sanctuary had attacked a 62-year-old man, biting off much of his face, tearing off his foot, and mutilating his genitals, I thought of Mike's thumb. And when I heard that Tatiana had attacked three young men, killing one of them, I immediately thought of his ear.
Mike Bleyman was a biologist who built a research and breeding compound outside Pittsboro, NC, and like many exotic-animal fanatics he had a tendency to lose body parts. Fortunately, the surgeons in Chapel Hill were skilled at sewing them back on.
Mike was also my stepfather. My parents divorced when I was in junior high, and when my mother moved in with Mike on "the farm," I went with her.
I was present when Lolita bit Mike's thumb right through the bone, almost severing it completely. I was away at college when the tiger got him.
Mike had arranged a trade with the Albuquerque Zoo in New Mexico — two Siberians and a Himalayan black bear for a young Sumatran tiger. Mike hit both tigers with tranquilizer darts. But ketamine, the drug of choice for sedating big cats, takes several minutes to work, and being an impatient man who didn't play by the rules, Mike entered the cage before the recommended time had passed. When he approached the male, the female roused herself. She slashed Mike across the back, dislocated his elbow, and removed his ear.
The fact that Mike was able to extract himself from the cage alive is testament to the fact that the ketamine had at least begun to have an impact. Siberian tigers are not creatures you want to mess with.
Our other tigers, all Bengals, were sociable and playful. As I walked by they would chuffle their hellos. I would chuffle back and reach through the fence to scratch their necks or rub their noses. The Siberians, however, had a flat affect, rarely vocalized, and menacingly tracked passing humans.
I know it's not fair to judge an entire subspecies by two individuals, and these cats had every reason to be sullen. They had evolved to preside as alpha predators over rugged territories of hundreds of square miles, and they were being forced to live sedentary lives in a gloomy shed probably ...
Thanks.
Congratulations on this award-deserving article. I am a life-long lover of house cats and admirer of all felines, yet I have had an aversion to zoos since childhood. You have articulated, to a large degree, the reasons for both attitudes. Thank you.
Several years ago, when visiting Disney World,I was struck by Wild Kingdom's mantra that they are "not a zoo." Good move, Disney; who would want to be known as a zoo, when this is the state of the industry!
As a person who has attended and videotaped numerous Joint Zoo Committee meetings since 2003 I can assure you that the committee is rubber stamp committee. During the elephant crisis at the zoo a few years back, not once did the committee address the issue.
I still cannot help but viscerally feel that these young hooligans acted irresponsibly and cruelly and are now lying to cover their butts and get the big pay-out. What's sad is that not only has a family lost their son and the world a magnificent and rare tiger, but the zoo will be forced to pay a settlement, resulting in even less adequate care for zoo animals.
Hearing the horrible story of the conditions your step-father kept animals in (tigers in a small shed) and about the 1950's zoo director's order to keep the tiger who had leapt out perpetually inside, break my heart. I remember going to the Prague Zoo as a small child in the 1980's and seeing these majestic creatures (tigers and lions) pacing back and forth in a small, cement cage with iron bars. Even as a young child, I knew something was terribly wrong, As an adult, I know there is.
The fact that paramedics overheard the elder of these stool samples telling his idiot sibling "Don't tell them what we did" while in the ambulance speaks VOLUMES.
True, the S.F. Zoo (I remember it as Fleishacker, so that gives you an idea of my age) is in some deep doo-doo, but I think that when the truth comes out (if ever) it will show that these reckless little cretins brought this on themselves.
I hope that the S.F. District Attorney's office charges these morons with murder because the death of their noble friend (who "took the bullet" for them) occurred during the commission of a crime (albeit a misdemeanor regarding the taunting of caged beasts).
They should also be held financially responsible for the replacement co$t$ of a new Siberian Tiger.
I think the real tragedy is that Tatiana was not able to finish the job before her summary execution by police.
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