So, I went out to my car at lunch yesterday to relax for twenty minutes and eat cheese and crackers and listen to the radio. (I like to get out of the office at lunch, or else it’s not an actual break.) I heard this story on the radio.
A spokeswoman for the SPCA said that they had been trying to get the animals removed from the owner, but had been unable to.
It’s a horrible thing to happen, not just to the woman who bled to death in front of her children, but for her children. I’m sure the boyfriend will suffer, and I don’t know what the fate of the animals will be.
But who the hell thinks that keeping Siberian tigers is a good thing to do? Who was the guy in New York City that had, what was it, an alligator, in his apartment? I boggle.
There are so many tigers being kept as pets that there’s not enough room for all of them at zoos, which limits the SPCA’s ability to take action, Moriarty said. I boggle.
Excuse me, but if you’re not a (good) zoo, or a sanctuary, keeping exotic animals is, in my humble opinion, a Bad Thing To Do.
Back home in Louisiana, I knew a man that had a pet alligator named “Baby” that was his life and lived mainly outside in a 2 1/2 acre pond about 50 feet from his house. Baby was 12 feet long and the only known alligator that I have ever read about that would come when called and heel. Skeeter Skinner (the owner) often opened the back and front doors of his house and let her wonder in and out using chicken parts as treats and rewards. Alligators are indigenous to that part of Louisiana so I am not sure what the issue would be. Baby was one loved gator and I once called her up and fed her a whole chicken. Judging by the look on her face, she certainly wasn’t unhappy.
My wife and I had an iguana named Attila as our first pet in our marriage. We spent more money on that big lizard than anyone should in the 4 years that we raised him from a tiny little thing until he jumped off my shoulder outside of our new house and ran away. He always had the nicest of all food, leisurely baths, stories, singing, and pedicures.
I would say that some people do just great with exotic pets but some just have them for a stunt and that is a shame.
Maybe I should amend my thoughts somewhat. Large exotic animals, like tigers, bears and so on.
Although I went to a pet/animal show once, and there were booths featuring exotic animals as pets–I don’t remember specifics, but some kinds of African cats and maybe one of those things Paris Hilton had.
I think we’ve domesticated enough dogs and cats and birds already to pretty much fulfil the human desire for a pet. I’m opposed to creating more “pets” out of wild animals, and really don’t think it’s a good idea to have a rhino or tiger in the back yard.
And thinking back to other threads–I don’t feed the raccoons, either. (I do need to refill the hummingbird feeder, though.)
People and other animals–the line to draw from keeping a dog to putting out some birdseed to leaving the damned critters alone can be a tricky one.
I don’t think ALL exotic animals are bad pets. You rarely hear of someone getting mauled by a wallaby, or a kinkajou, or a Chinese water dragon.
I do, however, think it is fantastically dumb for people to keep very large and powerful undomesticated animals as pets. Siberian tigers are a very good example. It’s like keeping a damn bear as a pet. Sure, he might be in the mood to let you feed him and even touch him now and then. But as soon as you get on his nerves, he’s going to make you stop what you’re doing, and he can’t tell you “hey, piss off.”
In general, I am against having things that could very well eat someone in a domestic abode. Wolves would be the only exception, because honestly, they’re not terribly different from dogs when raised from pups, and they CAN be controlled due to their pack-animal mentality. (And they aren’t that big.)
edit: oh, well, now I see you’ve amended your assertion anyway. phooey.
(A cross between the beautiful yet notoriously pissy African Serval and the domestic cat. Some people will tell you that this is a wonderful idea. These people are usually trying to sell you Savannah Cats.)
Exotics cannot be pets. Some of them can be companion animals but even at that they are not predictable, not reliable, and they are not pets. None of them. Not wolves, not bobcats, not raccoons. Not squirrels.
I used to deal regularly with the desire for a tiger as a pet when I had a conservatory for endangered cats. People were always calling to say that they wanted a tiger cub. Then they would add that they lived in an apartment. I generally explained the procedure for getting a permit and told them to call me after they got one. None of them ever called back, but that doesn’t mean they gave up. Probably they just found somebody else who was less particular about the whole permit thing.
There are a couple of ways to acquire a wild animal as a companion, though: I have known a couple of folks who had wild cats as sort of occasional companions who were native to the area. Bobcats in particular seem to be amenable to this arrangement. But in general the way you get an exotic companion legally in the US is to get a permit from the Department of Natural Resources or equivalent. It’s interesting, I never heard from the SPCA in all the time we had the cats.
Zoos mostly do not want animals in this situation, and it rarely has anything to do with having room. They have no way to know about the genetics of the animal (and zoos have breeding programs); the animals are almost invariably badly socialized vis a vis other animals; often they have health problems. They are just a big headache for a zoo.
I have generally liked the servals I have known and I have never known a pissy one. They are on the territorial size and on the, um, busy side in terms of temperament in my experience. You have to be prepared to provide them with a very high level of entertainment and exercise or they get temperamental, though. Maybe that’s what you mean?
“So if she’s playing hockey or anything, try to favor the other leg.”
“So it’ll grow back then?”
“I’m going to level with you. It’s … it’s not a virus, I’m afraid. You see, a virus is what we doctors call ‘very, very small.’ I think what we’re looking for, and this is just an educated guess, is a large multi-cellular life form about eleven foot long with razor sharp claws and goes by the name of felix horribilis, or a tiger.”
My SO used to work at a privately owned zoo in Arkansas. His job was primarily feeding the animals…they had tigers, lions, bears, monkeys–even an elephant!
He would always say that the animals loved him, but the reason they did was they thought HE was their food. For example, he was the one cutting up the meat and putting it in their cages, he says as far as the animals were concerned, he was giving them pieces of himself to eat. So even when they were tame looking and happy he never went inside a cage to pet one of them because he knew that at a moments notice they would get hungry and try to eat him.
So every time I see a story like this I always think, “The animal must have gotten hungry”
There was a girl here locally who wanted her picture taken with a tiger for her Senior Picture. You guessed it…they had a funeral instead of a graduation party.
Basically. I meant “pissy” relative to housecats, rather than other wild cats. My understanding is that servals are often purchased as exotic pets by people who erroneously assume that a serval is as low-maintenance as a housecat.
Also, every single serval I’ve personally encountered has gone out of its way to hiss menacingly with the promise of death in its eye. But that might just be me-- I get the same response from domestic cats, and even hamsters now that I think about it.
Any thoughts or insights regarding these new Savannah cats? I should stress that I’m not in the market for one.
Oh, dear. Um, that would be ahem an error, yes. A number of people asked me about a serval as essentially a hunting dog – for which I gather they are said to be suited – but not as a house cat. Oh, dear, such a house would be devoid of textiles after a time I should think.
Servals do hiss a lot though, more than any other breed of small cat I encountered.
My thoughts about hybrids in general are sort of mixed and I got out of the game post-Bengal and post- the bobcat manx crosses (bomax I think they called them) but pre-savannah cats. Though bobcat-domestic crosses happen a lot in north georgia for example, boy bobcats are not picky apparently.
I’m not opposed to hybrids but I think they are sort of overrated; most of the Bengals in the US get their spots from enhancement of the tabby gene no matter what their breeders may say. Which is not to say I don’t like Bengals, I certainly do. I like them as well as I do any purebred and I lack the whatever it takes to really value a purebred pet of any type, even a hybrid purebred if that makes sense.
While I like having cats as pets and I like having exotics as companions and occasional wards, I don’t find the relationships to be all that similar.
I saw another article about the attack that mentions she talked on the phone with her fiance (the tigers’ owner) as she was dying. Geez. I feel sad for everyone whose life was ruined by this incident.
On the othre hand, the adults in this situation knew they were taking a risk by choosing to have tigers around. I think it would have been even more horrifying if one of the couple’s kids had been the victim of the attack. Every now and then you hear about some poor child being killed by his/her family’s pet python or something like that.
Personally, I just can’t relate to this apparently widespread desire to have such a dangerous animal in your household and try to treat it like a pet. If you want something you can pet, why not get a normal housecat? I guess for some people, the danger may be exciting in some way.
:eek: I just googled about this because I was curious about how something like that could happen, and came up with these details:
I would sure like to know how someone went from the idea of a pic with some little baby cubs to letting that poor girl get near a 550 pound adult. What a totally senseless tragedy.
It’s not so much exotic animals as wild animals; cats and dogs have been BRED for use as domestic pets and to live alongside humans. Tigers have not. They rely on their instincts to take them from day to day and those instincts tell them, more often than not, people = threat/food.
I love tigers; they are beautiful animals but I would never want to be within range of one, at least not without a very strong fence in between. No matter what the ‘owner’ said about how sweet it was.
This isn’t true. Just because wolves are similar in appearance to dogs doesn’t make them suitable housepets. They’re very different creatures no matter how they’re raised.
And grey wolves can run well over 100 lbs so while they won’t be able to rip your arm off like a tiger, they can do considerable damage.
