According to a story released today by the AP, one of the three brothers mauled by a tiger in San Francisco on Christmas Day has admitted that he was drunk and/or high at the zoo, and had been taunting the tiger from outside his enclosure. Apparently, he was standing on top of the railing and yelling things at the animal.
The end result of this fateful visit to the zoo was the mauling of two young men, and the death of 17 year old Carlos Sousa Jr. Tatiana the tiger, pictured above, was also eventually shot and killed.
Now I was initially fully blaming the zoo for lack of a wall of reccomended height around the tiger enclosure. However, now that I know that these kids were egging the tiger on, I believe that they deserve most of the blame. You are messing with a dangerous wild animal, emboldened by the booze in your system and the fact that you are separated by a big wall. But as we now know, the boys weren’t nearly as tough when face to face with the big cat. Now a young man is dead, a tiger is dead, and it all probably could have been avoided if these men would have acted like normal zoo visitors.
I also have to think back to the Chris Rock routine following the Sigfried and Roy tiger attack. These men worked with big cats for year and Roy still got messed up in an instant. These tigers don’t go crazy, these tigers go tiger!
fast forward to 1:25
January 18, 2008 at 1:50 pm |
Welcome back. Like the new digs. Gotta disagree with ya on the tiger attack. Yeah, those kids were little fucking punks who may have had it coming to them, but that tiger is now dead because the zoo failed to provide the proper safeguards which would have ensured that it could not escape under any circumstances. I really don’t understand the media emphasis on the kids’ behavior, where the zoo’s negligence is as clear as day and seems to be the bigger story.
I liked Chris Rock’s statement regarding Hillary’s alleged 35 years of experience which supposedly makes her more qualified than Obama and Edwards — “I’ve been married to my wife for 11 years and I love her, but if she got up on this stage, you wouldn’t be laughing”