Kurt Wirth is a junior majoring in communication. He can be contacted at [email protected]. As you probably know by now, a tiger escaped from its pen on Christmas Day and mauled one young man to death and seriously injured his two brothers at the San Francisco Zoo. As a result, the tiger was shot and killed by the zoo. One of the men has admitted that all three had taken illegal drugs and consumed alcohol before visiting the zoo.
They also admitted to taunting the feline on top of a small fence surrounding a moat which encircled the 12.5-foot tall wall that enclosed the tiger.
But get this – police and crime scene investigators are actually investing their time and money in dusting for footprints on top of the moat’s wall, strip-searching the vehicle in which the three traveled and inspecting the brother’s cell phones.
The irrelevance of this investigation blows my mind.
Who cares? This massive investigation into the tiger’s motivation behind its attack is senseless.
First of all, this is a tiger in a zoo. It’s solely the zoo’s responsibility to restrict its inhabitants from escaping their enclosures, period. There is not a single argument to this fact that holds any water.
If humans find a way into the cat’s enclosure, then good luck, buddy, you’re on your own. But no animal in any zoo should have the means – whether it be rage or not – to escape its enclosure in any form or fashion.
According to an article released Jan. 18 by the Associated Press, “Experts say that’s only a notch up from the type of taunting animals regularly endure at the nation’s zoos.” In addition, the article also mentions a study that found that one in every four visitors tempt or tease zoo animals in some fashion and that “large predators like tigers are a prime target.”
While authorities are investigating criminal charges on the two living brothers, including misdemeanor possession of marijuana, the San Francisco Zoo is trying to avoid the fact that the 12.5-foot wall that actually enclosed the tiger was four whole feet below the Association of Zoos and Aquariums recommendations. On top of this, the same tiger has showed its aggressive demeanor before by attacking a zookeeper in 2006, ripping off the flesh from her arm.
Aggressive tiger plus too-short wall equals – no surprise here – an escape resulting in an attack of zoo visitors and the loss of life.
The bottom line is that the powers that be have chosen to avoid the fact that the tiger had a past of violence and that the zoo ignored obvious signs of trouble and risked the life of its visitors by housing the animal in an inappropriate enclosure.
When the owners and decision-makers of the zoo should be held accountable for the death of a human being, needless to mention the loss of the tiger’s life, the civil rights of a family are being trampled upon and relatives are being forced to mourn surrounded by a baseless investigation.
One can only hope that the investigators’ attention moves toward the zoo and that the family successfully sues for the sizeable amount of money they deserve.