All right…I’ve been trying really, REALLY hard not to comment on this particular news story, but I just can’t anymore. For those who aren’t aware, the story goes as such: on Christmas day, the San Francisco Zoo’s Siamese tiger Tatiana escaped from it’s enclosure, attacking three young man shortly after closing time. After escaping from the tiger grotto, Tatiana killed 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. and injured two 19-year-old Amritpal “Paul” Dhaliwal and his 23-year-old brother Kulbir. The brothers fled to the zoo cafe, and Paul’s screaming alerted a zoo employee, who called 911. Police arrived on the scene as the tiger tracked the brother’s, either by a trail of blood or other means, ignoring other patrons. The police found the tiger with Kulbir but did not shoot, according to the SF police chief, as they could not be assured of not hitting the man. After distraction, the tiger turned towards the officers, and was shot and killed. The Dhaliwal brothers received deep bites and claw wounds on their heads, necks, arms, and hands, but their injuries were not life-threatening, and they were released from the hospital on December 29, 2007.
Okay, that’s the basics. Now we get to the fucked-up parts.
There’s a lot of fault to be found here, and some of it falls with the zoo. To start with, it turns out that the moat wall of the grotto was on 12.5 feet tall, well below the American Zoo Association’s recommended 16 feet (and way below the zoo’s first statement that it was 18 feet). Also, the zoo had been fined almost 18 grand for a previous attack by Tatiana on zookeeper Lori Komejan almost exactly a year prior, citing inadequate precautions and staff training. So the SF Zoo did fuck up on this one, no question.
But what about the attacked men? Oh, get ready for this.
To start with, zoo-goer Jennifer Miller claimed on January 3rd that she saw the men, and a fourth individual, at the big cat grottos less then an hour before the attack, and three of them were taunting the lions. The only one who wasn’t was the later-killed Sousa. “He wasn’t roaring. He wasn’t taunting them,” she recalled. “He kept looking at me apologetically like, ‘I’m sorry, I know we are being stupid.’ ” Irony can be quite cruel. In addition, investigators found an empty vodka bottle in the car, a shoe print on the railing, and the newest revelation, which came today, is that a 9-inch rock, a tree branch, and pine cones were found that came from trees that were not near the tiger’s enclosure.
So, long story short…despite the brothers’ claims, both to the police (who they’ve been described as “hostile” to) and to Sousa’s mother, they were pretty damn assuredly taunting Tatiana in a drunken (and possibly high) stupor, thus provoking the tiger to attack them.
What. The. Fuck.
You know, when I was growing up, I went to the zoo more then a couple times. And any time I would tap on the glass, I’d get the riot act read to me by my parents. And deservedly so! My parents, while they aren’t the leftist hippy-esque nature-lover I am, have a little thing called “common sense,” and had no desire to see their children become cat food. But you know what? Even without that, when I was in my late teens/early 20’s, I could do the math. 130 lb. me vs 300 lb. tiger = TIGER FUCKING WINS! Game over, no reset, no back to the last save point. You throw a rock at an angry dog in your neighborhood, odds are it’s gonna come after you. And that’s a domesticated animal. This is a tiger. And you know what I call this? Darwinism at work. It’s survival of the fuckin’ fittest, and those three just weren’t fit.
Accounts state that paramedics taking the Dhaliwal brothers to the zoo by ambulance had overheard Kulbir tell his brother, “Don’t tell them what we did.” They actively refused to refused to give their names to authorities or identify Sousa–and in fact, lied to Sousa’s father when he called before the attack to locate his son, saying he wasn’t with them. Sorry, boys, but your credibility is officially in the toilet.
The only individual I feel bad for is Tatiana. That tiger was only doing exactly what tigers do. They get provoked and threatened, they attack. Why this is a surprise to anyone is utterly beyond me.
Of course, for the rest of the world, this is just a story of “tiger on rampage! Animals aren’t safe!” And you know what, maybe that’s what it should be. Maybe, if one good thing can come out of this, people will remember to remember that nature can be a dangerous place, and will treat it’s denizens with just a little more respect from now on. It’s just sad that such has to come at the cost of what will surely be a suffering in zoo attendance, if only in the short term before stupid people go back to tapping on the glass.
Wild animals aren’t cute, people. They’re beautiful, they’re majestic, but like Carlos Sousa Jr., the abhorrant Dhaliwal brothers, and people like Timothy Treadwell (killed along with his girlfriend by a bear after he was living among them without safety precautions) have had to learn the hard way, they’re dangerous. Anyone who doesn’t respect that, to be frank and kind of harsh, deserves exactly what they get.
–Jer
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