So what was the parent doing while their monkey was climbing fences, smoking crack?
So, despite the minor nature of the injury (lucky little fucker), two bears had to get put down because they did what bears do when you invade their space?
Sorry, but if it was my child, it wouldn’t have fucking happened, but that aside, you administer the rabies shots to the kid-you don’t destroy the animals. This is wrong on so many levels. :mad:
Why can’t they just give the kid the rabies treatment? What have they got to lose?
After all, if they kill the bears and find out that one of them had rabies, the kid’s going to have to have the shots anyway. And if the bears are clean, then the only downside is that the kid has to put up with a few needle jabs to the arm, and the parents have to pay for the shots. Which they deserve anyway for letting the little fucker climb the fence in the first place.
The whole series of rabies shots seems pretty routine and painless anyway, if the Wikipedia entry is any indication:
This sucks for the bears, and for the people who looked after them.
I don’t blame the kid at all. He’s 4 years old - that’s what they do. You might as well blame the bears for mauling him. His parents, though, should have kept an eye on him.
The real culprits are the zoo administrators. and not just for putting down the bears. Who designs a security system that a four-year-old can circumnavigate? If the zoo had been built properly, there’s no way that anyone could have gotten that close to the animals, and if they knew it had its weak points, there should have been someone there to keep an eye on things.
Well, a 15-foot high solid concrete fence would be a pretty good security system. Of course, it might make it a bit hard for zoo visitors to actually see the animals.
Generally, highly secure systems aren’t very spectator-friendly. And it’s spectators that pay the bills at zoos.
Also regarding a moat – bears can swim.
That’s hardly true. A couple of months ago I visited a zoo, and had my infant son stand exactly two inches away from a live tiger. Armored glass. Great stuff.
There were bears in the zoo, too, in an lovely ampetheater-shaped diorama, with a dry moat between us and them. Unless either the bears or the spectators could spring-jump fifteen feet, none of us was in any danger.
There are many creative ways to make zoos both appealing and safe. At the very least, the bears in question should have been beyond a double fence… or there should have been a guard.
I don’t know if it’s still there, but the Toronto Zoo used to have wild dogs in a similar display. I swear those dogs were coming within 6 inches of jumping out. They liked to wait for a crowd to gather, and then one of them would take a running leap, making everyone jump back in surprise.
[QUOTE=Alessan]
What kind of fence is it that a four-year-old can climb over it? And why wasn’t there a moat?/]QUOTE]Where were the parents during all of this? If the picture from the article is correct, there was plenty of time for the parents to hop the fence and stop the tot from reaching the country bear jamboree.
I’m another that doesn’t understand why the bears have to be killed – there must be a reason not given in the article. The only possibility that I can think of is that a bear that has bitten a human might be more likely to attack other humans (including the keepers, who can get a lot closer to the animals than the public, and who can be attacked by the animals). In that case, I can see taking more precautions about those bears, but killing them seems extreme.
Fucked up alright. As so eloquently stated above …
Where were the parents? Who the heck lets their kids get out of their sight in a public place? Particularly, a zoo?
It’s a crappy design if a four year old can get over it and into reach of bears.
The zoo official responsible for putting the bears down should be fired. They’re bears. They acted like, well, bears. This is expected behavior! It’s not like a bear that has, on its own initiative, come in out of the wild and become a nuisance in a public place. It’s not like a dog that has suddenly started biting people. It’s a captured bear acting like a bear. I mean, you may as well just shoot all the wild animals in the zoo that could conceivably be dangerous should a four year old break into their cages!! :rolleyes:
There’s a town a few hours’ drive away from me where there is a nature center that houses a semi-wild wolf pack (there is a large area of forest around the center, and a soundproofed, mirror-window enclosed observation deck where people can view the pack without disturbing them). Several years ago one of the employees at the center comitted suicide and decided to do this by going into the area where the wolves live and shooting herself in the head. After she was dead, the wolves and ravens in the area naturally thought - Hey, free food! - and dug in. After she was discovered the next day, even though the autopsy confirmed she was dead due to gunshot wound, not attack, they shot every single one of the wolves anyway, because they were afraid the animals developed a taste for people. Seven gray wolves dead, because of one person.
I have to tell you; I’ve been to a lot of zoos and seen a lot of zoo animals, and I haven’t seen a lot of dangerous animals in cages a four-year-old could get over. It’s not that hard to build a fence with vertical bars. I’m spoiled, as our local zoo, the Toronto Zoo, is a famously good zoo, but I’ve been to other zoos too and they’re pretty smart these days in how they design the animal enclosures.
And in fact, most large animal enclosures at every decent zoo do include a very high wall, but it’s high on the ANIMAL side; you just have to look down to see the animals.
The OP said, “the child climbed a 4-foot wooden fence into a restricted area and approached the 10-foot chain-link fence that surrounds the bears.” So there was a double fence around the bears. A 4 year old should be smart enough to know that bears attack people and he probably shouldn’t stick his hand through a chain-link fence. It’s not like he got bitten by a wild dog that he could have mistaken for his cute, cuddly puppy.
An anecdote to prove how dumb people are around bears (As if Grizzly Man weren’t enough):
A friend of mine is a park ranger at a MI State Park (Porcupine Mt.) where there are numerous black bears. Well one day he was called upon to kill a bear that had mauled a child, which was extremely unusual. Anyway, once he got to the camp site where it happened, they found a bear cub. When he asked what happened, it turned out that the parents of a ~4 year-old child thought it would be “cool” to get a photo of said child on the back of a bear cub. Yes, you read that right. A child’s parents placed said child on the back of a wild black bear, because they thought it would be “cool”. The bear didn’t particularly cotton to this, and knocked the kid off, and basically scratched him. They were minor wounds.
I’m sorry to say the bear was indeed destroyed (zero tolerance, you know).
It would be great if a 4-year-old did know that, but with the way nature is Disneyfied for children (especially these days), I think the kid was probably expecting something much more cuddly.
Maybe he shit his pants and was looking for one of the Charmin bears to wipe his ass for him.
Really, though, if the parent had been watching, this would not have happened. It’s completely the fault of the parent, IMO.
First, isn’t a chain-link fence a bit weak to stand up to a bear. Not that it’s likely to need more, but that it certainly could tear through that.
Second, that was a bar that dun “bit” that kid. If it had actually bitten him, him hand would be gone. Most likely, the kid got nicked by a tooth. Bear’s are big animals with jaws that can take off your head. Even black bears. I still understand why they had to put them down.