[FEL-L] SF tiger attack

[Tim Stoffel]

On Mon, 2007-01-01 at 19:30 -0800, Laura Morin wrote:
> Who knows if its really this bad... but ....
> 
> 
> Witness: Tiger devoured keeper's arm in San Francisco Zoo mauling
> The Associated Press
> Published 10:54 pm PST Sunday, December 31, 2006
> 
> Print | E-Mail | Comments (0)
> 
> A 350-pound tiger ate most of a zookeeper's right arm in a bloody mauling,
> according to a witness to the San Francisco Zoo attack that has kept its
> victim hospitalized for more than a week.
> 
> The zoo has not released the keeper's name or the extent of her injuries at
> her family's request. But Vikram Chari, 40, a business owner from San
> Francisco, told the San Francisco Chronicle he and his 6-year-old son
> witnessed the Dec. 22 attack from a few feet away.
> 
> "The tiger ate her hand. It slowly proceeded to eat the rest of her arm,"
> Chari said.

Anyone who has watched a tiger eat a similar item knows that this
process takes a 'long' time. What the heck was going on? Why wasn't
something done sooner? What kind of caging design allowed this? I have
occasionally worked around big cats in bar type cages, and I know that
this is not up to modern safety standards, even for 'friendly' cats. The
bars allow some good kinds of contact, but they also allow the cat to
contact you in an undesirable way if you don't pay attention. It is
unthinkable that a major zoo like the SF zoo (and one that has been
renovated) would have any amount of this kind of caging around,
especially close to the workers. It also seems to me that a keeper lost
her arm to a lion down in Florida a few years back, as as result of a
similar kind of incident. You think the big facilities would learn.

As far as being a 'vicious mauling', there's a good chance this started
out as play. Or, maybe the keeper had blood on her hands from feeding. I
know someone who nearly lost their leg to a lion because they went in
with the cat with bloody boots on after butchering an animal. Easy to do
with most any kind of meat, and certainly from Nebraska, which tends to
be bloody, anyway.

Tim Stoffel