a zoo that obviously wasn't up to the challenge of keeping people safe from her.

My DExH bought (for a huge sum) a police dog from Seattle that was about to be killed for biting its second handler. Why they charged him 4k for a dog that was a day away from the needle, I'll never know.

Still, he worked with that animal for weeks and could never get near it. Finally, he hired a vet to blow-gun tranquilize it. Discovered a prong collar rusted into its neck, under its black fur. The police unit and the two handlers never seemed to notice METAL stuck in the dog's neck. Obviously not up to the task of caring for that dog.

After an operation and some rest, he became the very best dog in my ex's site/personal protection business.

The tiger should have been moved somewhere it COULD be cared for.

she was a proven danger beyond the level normally associated with big cats in captivity

I'm led to understand she wasn't beyond the level normally associated with her kind in captivity. That's why she wasn't put down when she tried to eat her keeper's arms. Eating weaker animals is her job. Stopping her from doing that is one of the zoo's many jobs.

I think it's better that she was killed than risk another tragedy in the hands of a zoo that obviously wasn't up to the challenge of keeping people safe from her.

I think that's where I have the disconnect, Matt. The "normal" for a tiger is to tear your head off and eat you. Since the zoo couldn't keep its contract with the tiger, the solution was to transfer the tiger elsewhere, where she could live out her days not on display or in harm's way (to either people or herself).

The solution wasn't to put the tiger down for acting according to its nature. If it cost the zoo an assload to take the tiger off display while it fixed the problem with the enclosure, then that is part of the zoo's responsibility to the animal (in case another suitable home could not be found).

Oh, I forgot to mention. We may be adopting another dog! A seeing-eye dog whose owner died. The dog is too old to be retrained with another owner, but needs a good home to retire to, which we hope we can be. We go meet the pup this weekend.

He will shred paper, cardboard and all sorts of things if I let him.

Perhaps he would like to take apart a pink octopus.

I'd also like to add that I support zoos. I think when zoos are well-funded and well-run, they provide an enormous educational opportunity for humans to learn about animals they'd never otherwise see. They do a marvelous job educating the public about conservation, as well.

Just wanted to make sure I wasn't coming off as being all anti-zoo.

Circuses, not so much. Circuses need to not be doing the animal thing.

The dog is too old to be retrained with another owner, but needs a good home to retire to, which we hope we can be. We go meet the pup this weekend.

Aw!

My only exciting plan for the weekend is a massage on Monday! Yay long weekend! Yay massage!

My only plans for the (regular-length) weekend (no holiday on Monday for me) is working at the bookstore tomorrow, as usual. Considering it's going to be five degrees outside, with a wind-chill of about 25-30 below, I'm wondering how busy we're going to be. Either we'll be swamped with people looking to come in and get warm to escape the cold, or we'll be deader than dead with people staying home to escape the cold.

I actually forgot it was MLK weekend this weekend because Microsoft does not include it on their holidays (RACIAL!) I had the idea of having some friends over for dinner "the sunday of MLK weekend", but I thought it was next weekend, so no.

In theory ITA that the tiger should have been moved somewhere that she couldn't be a danger to humans, since the SF Zoo proved itself completely incapable of being that somewhere itself. In fact, as she was in the middle of killing and eating a human, killing her was the only option.

At that moment, anyway. There's still a heap of failure on the zoo's part. It failed to move her someplace safer after her first attack, then failed to create adequate barriers between her enclosure and the humans, and finally failed to have properly-loaded tranq guns at close hand and make sure that staff knew where they were and how to use them -- though, as the Guardian reporter pointed out, even if someone had been there to tranq her immediately, siberians are so massive that it still would've taken several minutes for the tranq to take effect so a human might have died anyway.

At that moment, killing her was totally necessary, but still 1000% the zoo's fault, not hers (and not even so much the stupid teens' -- she was in an unsafe, escapable space, and if it hadn't been them it would've been something, anything else that eventually kicked her into predator mode).