Return of the Killer Cat

Folks, today we're going to revisit the issue of the tiger mauling at the San Francisco zoo. We're going to revisit it because people complained to our editor that The Cynics' Salon had not tackled the issue with customary tenacity. In short: we wimped out.
Today we shall not wimp out. Let the invective begin.

Assuming that you've read the previous article and are at least mildly familiar with the story, we shall pose this rhetorical question to you, dear reader: Who--for the love of Pete--goes to a zoo on Christmas Day to taunt a three-hundred-fifty-pound Siberian tiger with a slingshot? Moreover, if you're going to nettle a tiger with a slingshot, what would you expect would happen? A Siberian tiger, and indeed all tigers and great cats, have one purpose on this planet: to kill things. And they are very good at what they do. If you're dumb enough to taunt this well-tuned killing machine of the wilds, we daresay you deserve to get mauled.

"But, Ryan!" you might say, "What about the children?" It's a tragedy that this happened to these people and to their families. It's a tragedy that one of them died. It's a tragedy that it happened at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas day. It's a tragedy that they were dumb enough to provoke a tiger. And it's tragedy that the tiger had to be killed in order to save two of these idiots.

To be fair, the tiger (whose name was Tatiana) had previously bitten one of the zookeepers at a public feeding. The zoo was fined for inadequate safety procedures, but the zoo's director opined that Tatiana was simply doing what a tiger does. But there is a gulf of difference between a tiger biting a zookeeper at feeding time, and a tiger going on a bloody rampage because three punk kids are shooting it with slingshots.

The two survivors have since retained Mark Geragos (of Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson fame) and reported plan to sue the zoo. Upon learning this, my cowriter put it best: "Really? There's going to sue the zoo for not preventing them from being suicidally stupid? Isn't that a little like suing Smith and Wesson over a game of Russian Roulette?" This contributor has to agree. What basis do these two think they have to build a case against the zoo?

Sure, the tiger enclosure's wall was shorter than the minimum height mandated by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, but the experts agree that there was no way the tiger would have made that leap had someone not provoked it. Investigators discovered concrete chips in Tatiana's paws, evidencing that it had had to claw its way out of the dry moat around the enclosure just to reach the wall.

But they have Mark Geragos. They'll file the suit, the zoo will settle in order to minimize the bad publicity, personal responsibility for one's actions and their consequences will have been defeated yet again in a colossal waste of the legal system's time and money, three families will get richer, Geragos will get richer still, and a seventeen year-old boy and a tiger will still be dead.

Didn't these kids' parents not warn them that they'll be burned if they play with fire? Isn't that basically the same concept we're dealing with here?

Cheers,

Lockhart