Tiger beat: clearance sale
The inevitable PETA press release on the tiger attack includes their open letter to SF Zoo director Manuel A. Mollinedo.
NBC11.com has an interview with the dead man’s father. KPIX quotes zoo experts as saying it would have been very unlikely for a zoo tiger to have leapt over the 15-foot-wide moat around its enclosure, suggesting it might have had some kind of help, such as a board that enabled it to climb over the wall.
NPR was reporting that the three victims were together outside the tiger enclosure; when the tiger went for 17 year old Carlos Souza Jr., the two older men ran to a zoo restaurant, where the tiger pursued and attacked them. The SF Chronicle quotes zoo officials as saying the tiger may have injured at least one of them outside the tiger pen, then followed the trail of blood to the eatery. (See the map in last night’s original post.)
Also, this interesting detail is in the Chronicle story:
At one point, police said, zoo officials feared that the four other tigers that belong to the zoo were on the loose. Authorities said one zookeeper wanted to go into the large cat grotto to account for the remaining animals, and police had to physically restrain him.
The UK’s Daily Express has what appears to be a purely imaginary interview with one of the attack’s survivors. And a man writing for The Scotsman offers a dramatic account of the attack, including the curious factoid that a Christmas visit to the zoo is “a custom for many San Franciscans.”
No, Scottie. We might like going to the mall. But not the maul.
in the 60’s male tiger jumped out of adjoining grotto. it was surmised that he was agitated by cubs in the grotto. no one bothered it and no damage was done to anyone. reports were in the san francisco chronicle and my relative was there watching when it happened. heckling isn’t the only reason for this jump and it’s not the first tiger to successfully jump out.
in the 60’s male tiger jumped out of adjoining grotto. it was surmised that he was agitated by cubs in the grotto. no one bothered it and no damage was done to anyone. reports were in the san francisco chronicle and my relative was there watching when it happened. heckling isn’t the only reason for this jump and it’s not the first tiger to successfully jump out.
I think you should close down the zoo totally. It is only time your Mayor and City Council gets around to it.
No bottled water to be sold to tourists and SAMs/COSTCO high tax on soda. LOL
This is one of the reasons I left California because of the bleeding heart, tax grubbing idiots in and around S.F.
Oh yes now the ZOO says the cat jumped out. The wall that was suppose to be 18ft as said by director but…
"San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo acknowledged that the wall around the animal’s pen was just 12 1/2 feet high, after previously saying it was 18 feet. According to the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, the walls around a tiger exhibit should be at least 16.4 feet high."
Bad seed cat, a Denver zoo reject, arrived in 2005. Bad seed cat tasted a zoo keeper’s arm in Dec 2006. Stupidly, zoo left bad seed cat alone instead of puttin’ her down cold. Also, as noted above, there had been previous cats that jumped out. Of course, that sort of thing is really bad PR, plus, the "fix" would have been very, very expensive (complete grotto redesign and rebuild). Remember, grotto was one the first of this "modern" type – no one really knew what the specs needed to be. Like most disasterous outcomes, a number of mistakes added up to create a serious problem. Clearly, the zoo is to blame.