[FEL-L] SF Zoo more comments, statistics at end

[Gary Breuckman]

>  Gary, those of us that get the digest didn't get your statistics,
>  since it was an attachment. Could you put them in the body of a
>  post so we can get them also? Thanks.
>  John Perry

Sorry, what seems to be happening is that when you forward articles,
sometimes the email ends up "html only" and then it doesn't come out
properly in the digest or the archive, even though it's fine in the
list itself.  It seems to be sort of random depending on the source,
the message just prior was processed the same way and was fine.

Here is the article, in plain text...

- - - -

>From puma at catbox.com
Subject: [FEL-L] SF Zoo more comments, statistics at end

SF Zoo lion attack on keeper, more followup, everyone wants to get a
say in.
There are some numbers at the end that would be good to verify.

San Francisco Chronicle

        Zoo's public feedings of big cats praised, condemned by experts

Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Thrilling. Barbaric. Primal. Anachronistic. Awe-inspiring. Unnerving.
Sick.

Those are some of the adjectives used to describe the public feeding of
lions and tigers at the San Francisco Zoo -- a venerable ritual that has
stopped with the closing of the zoo's Lion House after a gruesome attack
on a keeper three days before Christmas, observed by scores of visitors.

In the wake of the Dec. 22 mauling of Lori Komejan, whose right arm was
chewed up just after mealtime by a Siberian tiger named Tatiana, the
future of the Lion House is unclear.

"It will be closed until further notice," said zoo spokesman Paul Garcia.

Over the decades, generations of Bay Area residents have watched the big
cats devour chunks of horsemeat in their cages inside the Lion House. The
public feeding occurs six days a week at 2 p. m., when the four lions and
three tigers are summoned from their outdoor enclosures. On Tuesdays and
Fridays, the menu includes dead rabbits as well.

The event is one of the zoo's most popular attractions -- and
increasingly one of its most controversial.

"It was the highlight for me," recalled 72-year-old Bob Paterson of
Rocklin (Placer County), who grew up in the city.

"One time when I was a kid, I walked 5 miles to the zoo," said the
retired PG&E employee. "I got there at 2 p.m. It was raining, and I was
the only one there. When one lion roars, they all roar. And I said to
myself, 'I'm in Africa.' "

He visited that continent in 1978 and 1984 and will return in May -- all
prompted by his Lion House experiences.

Other zoo patrons have come away with far different memories.

"It was barbaric," said Shannon Rizzo, who lives in Lafayette and
homeschools her four children. "It seemed like something out of the
Middle Ages. A public gathering for something that's kind of private. It
would be OK if we were unseen observers and it were less of a circus."

Katie Harrar, an event producer from San Francisco, said she was
ambivalent about the feedings before Tatiana's encounter with Komejan but
now is convinced that they should stop.

"I think we're beyond that, honestly," Harrar said. "I want to learn, but
not to the extent of watching somebody toss a carcass and watch the
animal go nuts over it. It's old-school, and it's not appropriate
anymore."

About three years ago, Harrar dropped by the Lion House with her
1-year-old niece, who was in a stroller, and noticed that the lions and
tigers were eyeing the small children in the crowd as if they were a
"potential meal."

"It was really disconcerting and unnerving," she said. "It got me
thinking, 'Who's really watching whom?' "

Harrar wasn't imagining things. Martine Colette, founder of the Wildlife
WayStation refuge for wild and exotic animals in Southern California,
said, "Small children are always a temptation for large predators because
they're like moving hors d'oeuvres."

Although the pros and cons of the public feedings could be debated
endlessly -- in terms of their effects on keepers, onlookers and animals
-- most experts agree with Colette.

"We don't allow children under 7," said Louis Dorfman, an animal
behaviorist with the International Exotic Feline Sanctuary in Boyd,
Texas. "It's just the size of the kids. They're inherently looked on as
prey."

Dorfman, 69, said he has had more than 35,000 unprotected contacts with
exotic cats over the years. The value of public feedings of lions and
tigers depends on how they're done, he said.

"I would be concerned that it would condition kids to think it's OK to
get close and to feed them through the cage," he said.

Dorfman frequently walks into the habitats in the Texas sanctuary after
assessing the mood of the residents. Last week, he hand-fed two tigers 40
meatballs apiece.

"I am much safer doing it in their presence than I would be trying to do
it through the fence," Dorfman said.

The reason is simple -- they're cats. "They just want to reach out and
grab something," he said. "They don't associate the object coming through
the fence with that person."

When Tatiana reached under the cage in the Lion House and seized the
hands of Komejan, a 46-year-old single mother who lives on the Peninsula,
she probably meant no harm, Dorfman said.

Another veteran of unprotected contact with big cats was less conflicted
than Dorfman about the public feedings in the Lion House.

"I think they should never have been permitted," said Rich Menefee, a
former keeper at Marine World who runs a manufacturing company in Santa
Cruz County.

"The very same tigers that I literally rode around like ponies were the
same tigers that tried to rip me apart at feeding time," he said via
e-mail. "Feeding time was never observed by guests. It was an
awe-inspiring experience."

San Francisco might have the only zoo in North America where big cats are
fed in public, said Ronald Tilson, director of conservation at the
Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, Minn., and head of the Association of Zoos
and Aquariums' Species Survival Plan for tigers. He said a few
institutions have started introducing parts of whole carcasses, but most
have become a "little too sterile" and rely on food processed in
factories that carries no risk of disease transmission.

"It's very easy to clean afterward," Tilson said. "There isn't rabbit fur
flying everywhere, getting stuck in the drains. But the process of
chewing and gnawing and crunching bones is good for the mouth and makes
it closer to what real feeding was like. It's very common in Europe."

One proponent of public feeding is Carole Baskin, chief executive officer
of Big Cat Rescue, a sanctuary with more than 100 felines in Tampa, Fla.

"We do public feedings to show people that the cats they may have seen
elsewhere on leashes, doing tricks or posing for photos, become entirely
different animals in the presence of food," Baskin said. "When a person
sees a tiger crunch through a cow femur like it was a potato chip, they
can visualize what some part of their body would look like in the cat's
mouth."

She is hoping that such visceral displays will end the demand for big
cats as props or pets and put breeders out of business.

Komejan, meanwhile, is still recovering at San Francisco General
Hospital, although officials won't release any details. The assault on
her was rare in San Francisco Zoo history but not unprecedented.

On March 16, 1935, a mountain lion named Bruce attacked San Francisco
police Patrolman Walter Ames in what was then known as the Fleishhacker
Zoo. His partner, Officer Norman White, reacted. The next day, a
front-page Chronicle story described what happened:

"There was a savage roar as a tawny paw lashed out, caught Ames' coat
sleeve and drew his arm into the cage. In a moment Officer Ames' whole
hand was in the lion's mouth and he could feel the teeth tear and grind.

"Up ran Officer White, whipped out his service pistol and fired -- once,
twice, three times. The jaws relaxed as the huge beast rolled over on its
side dead."

In March 1949, a polar bear called Mischa crushed the arm of Arthur
McKinney, a house painter who was tossing some lump sugar his way. The
bear finally let go -- he wanted to knock his cage mate away from the
treat.

_____________________
Big cat incidents

Big Cat Rescue, a nonprofit educational sanctuary in Tampa, Fla., has
kept track of 791 incidents since 1990 that have involved captive big
cats. The incidents have resulted in:

Confiscations: 362

Human maulings: 240+

Killing or deaths of big cats: 234

Exotic cat escapes: 212

Human deaths: 68

Source: Big Cat Rescue
The Chronicle
E-mail Patricia Yollin at pyollin at sfchronicle.com.