Buckles Blog: Tiger Sanctuary #10

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Roger Smith said...: This is exactly how it happens. The keepers credit themselves with having tamed these tigers, and lapse into unforgiveable irresponsibility. The inevitable attitude taken is, "We know the animals--they love us." The corollary always becomes, "After all, nothing has ever happened." Then comes the day. In a flash of truth, the visitor becomes the victim.

For me, such moments are underscored from being there when the "tame lion" attacked Zoltan Hargitay, the son of Jayne Mansfield, at Jungleland, November 25, 1966. The 6-year-old was encouraged to get his picture taken like this, too, since the lion was a "tame contact cat" from television. Sammy, the lion retired from the Ron Ely "Tarzan" series, had been delcawed, which is all that saved the boy. Sammy's fangs punctured the back of the skull, the neck, and tore into the trapezoids. Zoltan almost died from initial shock, the injuries themselves, and later from the meningitis that set in. All this because those who ran the Compound, and from whom professional responsibility was demanded and expected, succumbed to conceit, and when that day came, insisted that it was they who could say a lion was tame.; 18 March, 2012 20:13

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