Years ago, when I first moved to Miami, there was an incident at the Metrozoo in which a tiger killed a zookeeper who had entered its enclosure in order to drop off more food (“Purina tiger chow”?). The enclosure encompassed two separate “tiger areas” and apparently the zookeeper thought the tiger was in the other part of the enclosure and that the gate connecting the two areas had been sealed. He thought it was safe. Unfortunately for him he was wrong, and the tiger attacked, killed and mostly ate him.
This was a media sensation for about a week, and I remember listening to a radio interview with Metrozoo’s head zookeeper, who was asked if the tiger would be “put down.” I loved the zookeeper’s indignant response: “Hell no the tiger isn’t gonna be ‘put down’! The tiger was just being a tiger! He was doing what tigers do!”
I remember thinking that this was exactly right. We pay our money and go to the zoo to see large, dangerous animals close up. When somebody screws up and that large, dangerous animal kills someone . . . well, that’s why we pay our money to look at them. Because we know that they can.
