Yellow Bird: Wild animals in our environment

"How do wild animals fit in our environment? On Christmas Eve, a 3-year-old female Siberian tiger, Tatiana, apparently crossed a dry moat, leaped a 12-foot wall and attacked and killed a young man and injured two others. Tatiana was housed in the San Francisco Zoo.

Tatiana isn't the only tiger to have mauled someone. Animal trainer Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy fame was onstage in Las Vegas when he was critically injured by his white tiger - a tiger he had worked with for years. It is easy to find more such incidents involving tigers, too.

Do wild animals, which kill to live every day in their natural habitat, belong in cages or enclosures where they can be supposedly trained? Or, is it their fate to become extinct - the new dinosaurs?

We have to wonder how the young men in San Francisco got in such a dangerous situation. If they taunted the tiger, maybe they'd seen animal trainers feed and “play” with tigers, and that hid the danger.

Experiences from childhood shape the way we perceive our environment, including animals. My childhood experiences with animals came from my grandfather, uncles and brothers, but what I remember most came from my father, Grover. He was a quiet man who lived in a world where animals such as grizzly bears, mountain lions and other predators could be found."

Get the Story:
Dorreen Yellow Bird: Story reminds me why I dislike zoos (The Grand Forks Herald 12/29)
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