OLEAN -- Lions and tigers, oh my ...
Big cats and their misadventures have been in the news lately, and there are underlying reasons why.
A fascinating sub-culture of shortsighted Americans of questionable intelligence has boosted the population of these beautiful, endangered animals in the United States to record numbers of late.
Not in zoos and sanctuaries and circuses.
As pets.
There are probably only 4,000 or so tigers left in the wild around the world, say the experts, but as many as 7,000 or more are kept as dangerous pets across this country. They used to cost thousands of dollars. Now you can get one for about $400 on the Internet, or by word-of-mouth searching. Shady dealers abound. In the South, you can buy tiger kittens -- cash only -- from the back of a pickup truck or some guy's camper in a roadside zoo parking lot, or even at a big flea market.
One reason for the drop in price: Various American zoos -- not all, but many -- overbred the big felines in the 1970s and 1980s because that's what zoogoers wanted to see and show their kids. The crowds grew larger, but soon there were too many lions and tigers. To get rid of the excess, zoo officials -- who are always yapping about how much they care for these big cats and how wonderful is their care -- quietly began peddling them off to big game dealers.
A recent issue of "International Game Warden: The World's Leading Magazine for Conservation Law Enforcement" reports that "the zoos sold surplus animals to dealers" in such quantity that a booming word-of-mouth market sprang up, as did several lucrative breeding farms, and even a prosperous trade publication, the Indiana-based "Animal Finder's Guide."
Television viewers and news show buffs have been treated in recent days to one of the fruits of all this -- the almost laughable spectacle of a sharp, articulate lawyer struggling to portray his 31-year-old Manhattan truck driver client as a saintly humanitarian, well-meaning animal lover, and modern-era St. Francis.
This, despite the fact his client faces reckless endangerment charges for keeping a tiger named Ming and a caiman (first cousin to a crocodile) named Al in a Harlem public housing apartment about the size of your kitchen table.
Incredibly, Antoine Yates kept a pet rabbit and a pet kitten named Shadow in there, too, and expected them to survive. When police finally broke into the place, either the hungry Ming or the hungry Al apparently had eaten both smaller animals.
Now we learn that Yates also kept a lion in there! And not even the angry neighbors know where it disappeared to. Yates dodges the question on television, but New York City police suspect the tiger killed the lion, and that Yates successfully disposed of it somehow.
There are tragic, yet somewhat comic, overtones to the tale. Yates -- like most unthinking big cat owners -- acquired Ming as a cuddly cub, then watched it grow to a completely unmanageable adult tiger who needed several pounds of expensive raw meat a day just to stay alive. Eventually, Yates couldn't even get back into his apartment because the famished tiger was roaring behind the entry door. Yates took to opening the door a crack, cautiously tossing a chicken into the apartment, and slamming the door closed again as Ming munched away.
That method was not perfect, Yates learned, when the more agile Ming bit him severely during one of these awkward feeding sessions and sent him to the emergency room, where Yates tried to convince dubious health care workers he'd been nicked by a pit bull. Their calls eventually triggered the police raid on his pad.
Now we are treated to Yates, in the company of his lawyer, blathering on television that he was only "trying to make a Garden of Eden ... a place of harmony" and other such lunacies. The gullible television show hosts nod in agreement like this guy is Marlin Perkins or something.
Ming is now in quarantine at an Ohio animal refuge called Noah's Lost Ark, exploring the outdoors for the first time. The brilliant Yates tried to visit him over the weekend, but couldn't get on the flight because he had no identity papers -- they were still in his inaccessible, police-sealed apartment.
Meanwhile, New York housing authority workers are laboring daily to remove the stench, dirt, and digestive waste that was so voluminous tiger urine was dripping through the ceiling of the apartment below.
Here's another surprising reason for the big cat population boom in America that few folks know about. Our enterprising drug dealers are replacing their pit bulls and Rottweilers with lions and tigers to guard the stash.
They've noticed that raiding colleagues in this lucrative trade -- seeking to rob both cash and dope -- might successfully pump a small-caliber round into a dog before making their way to the goods. But put a .22 hollow-point special or .38 dum-dum into a tiger, and you get eaten for your troubles. And using a bazooka as weapon of choice attracts police attention.
One excellent big cat shelter I have toured recently is in northern Arkansas. At the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge near Eureka Springs, the humane operators will tell you many of the 125 or so tigers and lions they care for were sent to them by big-city police departments that confiscated the animals during drug raids. Most arrived malnourished and neurotic, some near death.
Turpentine Creek (www.turpentinecreek.org) has more than 450 acres of scenic natural habitat in the Ozark Mountains and a large number of other exotic animals like leopards and cougars and bears.
Each animal has a printed biography of general confinement, hunger and woe, but even here there is some dark humor -- like the bear taken in as a cub by the good-hearted rural couple who thought he was a lost and perpetually hungry Rottweiler puppy, just one with these huge feet and a pointed nose, and that kept wrecking the kitchen. Finally -- when it reached about 600 pounds -- they figured out this was no dog.
But Turpentine Creek is also perpetually broke. It exists on the kindness of strangers. It costs more than $1,000 a day just to feed these critters. And they keep pouring in. Between June and December of last year, they took in 30 new big cats, and could have rescued 60 more if the money and facilities were there.
The other recent and much-televised big cat episode, of course, is from the astounding Las Vegas magic show "Siegfried and Roy" -- a smooth and unbelievable act that brought in about $44 million a year and employed almost 250 workers at The Mirage, which had signed up the pair for life. Master illusionists, Siegfried and Roy could make one of their rare Royal White tigers disappear in front of your eyes with the snap of a finger.
But a 7-year-old male tiger named Montecore almost made Roy disappear over a week ago -- dragging him offstage by his throat and leaving him in critical condition, fighting for his life. The inside skinny is Montecore was fascinated by a woman in the front row sporting a huge hairdo. Lord knows what the cat thought the big hair looked like. Montecore crouched down and crept closer to the front of the stage for a better look.
According to Las Vegas TV station KLAS, the clueless lady tried to pet the big tiger, but Roy saw the danger and tried to yank Montecore away. This spooked the tiger, who chomped onto the magician's arm. Roy whacked the cat over the head with his live microphone and -- casino magnate Steve Wynn told KLAS -- began saying, "No, no, no, no. Release. Release."
Then Roy fell backwards and the big tiger seized him by the throat and dragged him offstage. Siegfried Fischbacher, Roy Horn's partner, says the big cat was merely trying to protect his friend the magician from the unknown danger -- maybe the big-haired lady. Siegfried noted in various TV interviews that if the tiger had wanted to kill Roy, he easily would have snapped his neck in a second.
The warm-hearted thought of a performing tiger trying to rescue his master from a naive spectator is a poignant take on the entertainment calamity, but other experts say no, that Montecore was going for the kill.
At any rate, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups are pressuring Siegfried to dismantle the act and let loose the tigers -- but no one knows where they would go, and the truth is the magicians probably love and take care of these money-makers better than anyone else would.
You'll hear more about this growing problem. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and various state Fish and Game commissions are worried sick about the increase in big cat traffic and the ensuing maulings and deaths of nearby children in the increasingly frequent attacks around those Americans who domicile the animals at their homes.
There is no federal law against keeping these beautiful beasts as pets. Among states, only Georgia and New Jersey prohibit the practice. Some localities -- usually where a kid has been mauled -- have passed owner regulations, but only a few.
Breeders and dealers are supposed to be licensed by the Department of Agriculture, but many aren't, and the Ag officials have a tough time keeping up with the required facility inspections. Even when they do find deficiencies and dangers, the federal inspectors usually just issue a warning. This hacks off the big cat dealers, of course.
A Houston dealer named Joe Cruz told The Wall Street Journal recently he doesn't think the federal government has the authority to issue such warnings, and that it's unfair to regulate the more responsible breeders and dealers because of irresponsible ones: "Just because one person is an idiot doesn't mean that everyone should be punished."
Uh, Joe, beg to differ.
If you have kids, and you buy a cute and furry little tiger cub for them to play with in your tidy little Middle American home without considering you have just introduced into your family a beast that will within months turn into a man-eating predator -- then you're an idiot.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 14 2003 |