Posted on Tue, Oct. 07, 2003  

GARY BOGUE
Attack a reminder that 'tamed' animals aren't

God created domestic cats so that men might touch tigers.

-- D. A. N.

I'm not surprised that Roy Horn of the spectacular team of Las Vegas
illusionists, Siegfried & Roy, got mauled by one of his white tigers
Friday night during their show.

The only thing that surprises me is that it took 35 years of
performing on a stage full of 600-pound white tigers -- six shows a
week, 44 weeks per year -- for one of the tigers to finally get around
to attacking him.

That means those guys really know what they are doing. But no one is
perfect when it comes to dealing with those occasionally unpredictable
animals.

When you spend a lot of time working with big cats, and the huge
felines become imprinted to you, and you become imprinted to them, you
have to be very, very careful not to forget that beneath those
stripes, they are still wild animals.

It's easy to do that, especially if you have worked with the tiger for
years -- raising it from a tiny cub into a full-grown 600-pound adult.

It's also not a good idea for you to get physical, even in a seemingly
insignificant way, with a predator that is lots bigger, faster and
more powerful than you are.

If the predator ever decides to challenge you, there is no way you're
going to win.

According to the Associated Press, Horn told the tiger to lie down
during the show. It didn't, so he "tapped it on the nose with a
microphone to get its attention."

Would your tabby let you get away with hitting it on the nose?

I thought not.

GRAPHIC
» Sigfried and Roy's long run
 
The big cat grabbed his arm, pulling him down, and he tried to beat it
off with the microphone. The tiger immediately reverted from "tame"
show animal to wild jungle predator and grabbed him by the neck, and
now Horn is in critical condition in a Las Vegas medical center.

You can develop extremely close relationships when you spend years
working with animals like this. But sometimes, in an instant, this
kinship can become an illusion.

I was attacked by a teenage mountain lion during a similar encounter
about 25 years ago when I was curator at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum
in Walnut Creek.

An associate and I spent several years in a research project raising
surplus zoo mountain lion cubs. We raised the cubs, imprinting
(taming) them to us so we could one day stay close enough to observe
them running free in the wild and study how they developed into
adults.

We needed this information so that we human foster parents could
figure out the kinds of things we'd have to teach orphan wild cougar
cubs to help them survive when they were rehabilitated back into the
wild.

You never forget such moments, and even now, all these years later, I
can remember it clearly.

I was playing with a 75-pound, 8-month-old male mountain lion in a
large cage in my back yard. He was about the size of a large German
shepherd.

I had raised him from a tiny 4-pound cub. I was hugging him and
patting his sides and scratching his ears, and he was purring like a
Harley-Davidson, rubbing against my legs and almost knocking me over
in his excitement and pleasure.

We continued our fun for about 10 minutes and then I suddenly
remembered I had an appointment and stopped playing with the cat and
turned to leave the cage.

The lion didn't want me to go. He let out a "yowl" and grabbed me
around the legs with his front paws to keep me from leaving.

I was in a hurry to get to my meeting, so I turned around and without
thinking, bopped him on his head with the palm of my hand.

Big mistake.

My nice, friendly lion "son" instantly reverted to being a wild
animal, and the next thing I knew I was thrown flat on my back, his
large paws gripping my body with equally large claws.

I've still got the scars to prove it.

The 10 minutes I spent lying on my back on the cold concrete floor of
that lion cage gave me plenty of time to think about what I'd done
wrong. While I was pondering the error of my ways, I stayed absolutely
still.

Once the cub finally relaxed, he let go of me and started making
distressed sounds when he smelled the blood that was streaming out of
the claw marks on my arms and legs.

It still took me 30 minutes before I could calm him down enough to let
me out of the cage.

I was lucky. I tapped a 75-pound teenage mountain lion lightly on the
head with my hand and got off with a few scars on my body.

Horn tapped a 600-pound tiger on the nose with a microphone and he's
in critical condition.

I hope he makes it.

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