The Fool, the Hooch and the Hungry Tiger.

Long ago in school, I learnt a little verse.

There was a young lady from Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They returned from the ride
with the lady inside
and the smile on the face of the tiger.

Did you ever here anything so idiotic as the story of the girl who stuck her paw into a tiger's cage in Dublin zoo in the past few days? What a bloody idiot! It beggars belief. Now it seems that she was badly injured, and that's not to be ridiculed. But great God, what sort of free-range idiots are walking around? The morning after, the zoo's director was interviewed on Morning Ireland, RTE Radio 1, 9:45-ish am. Fair play to him, he got the killer punch in before you could say solicitor. He told the nation in a big chunky Dutch accent that the bottle of soft drink from which the girl had been drinking had been analysed, and it contained... alcohol. Bingo! All the sympathy of the nation flew out the window like Billy Connolly's girlfriend.

Now I'm deeply in utter admiration of the lateral thinking that was at work here. After the ambulance departed from the zoo with it's nenagh-nenagh going, after the tiger relaxed and went back to slurping its kit-e-kat, after the security guys put their hands back in their front pockets to check that nothing was missing in the hurly-burly and after all the wind-down, somebody was sharp enough to pick up the lemonade bottle AND SEND IT TO THE LAB!

Brilliant!

Now, why would the lab in Dublin zoo need an expertise in testing lemonade for alcohol I wonder? Not relevant at this time and not germaine to this thesis. But interesting nonetheless. Back to the story.

Anyway, on comes my man the boss of the zoo on Morning Ireland, and he got his chance to fire the crucial shot and scupper the litigation before it even began. He had some other shite about climbing over fences and all that, but you'd expect to climb a fence if you wanted to feed yourself to a tiger in the zoo, wouldn't you?
The interviewer next asked an incomprehensibly, dumb, assinine, dorky question. 'Will the tiger be put down now?'

And it floored the Dutchman. 'Not at all, it is a beautiful animal' was the lame off-the-cuff reply. Now, the merits of putting down an animal are not a function of its subjective beauty, are they? Supposing it was a crocodile, wouldn't the decision be the same?

Let's digress. Why do we have these euphemisms like 'putting down' and putting to sleep'? Why didn't she say 'will the tiger be shot/poisoned/electrocuted/ hanged/beheaded/euthanised/strangled or just plain KILLED? Why don't we say I'm taking the dog to the vet to be killed because he (the dog) is old and sick? It's a faux politeness I don't like, a bit like people who don't say bitch when they mean female dogs, and ladies who knit teacosies for their jacks rolls.

Anyway, back to the tiger. Dutchman fluffed an otherwise perfect media performance, because he was asked a question so dumb and bonkers he hadn't anticipated it. Now go look at the comments on the story on Radio Limerick's website. Thy are all about the tiger, and why it should not be put down, AFTER the bollix said it wouldn't be happening.

To analyse this further, let's consider for a moment why the question was put. If an animal exhibits behaviour that offends us, we deem it should no longer live. For example, if a rottweiler, a greyound or a cocker spaniel in my neighbourhood ate the arm off some child, I would shoot the dog myself if necessary. The reason is that it is morally unaceptable for an animal to ingest the flesh of a human being. Therefore to respect the primacy of the dignity of all our fellow human beings, the animal should not live and derive its being from human flesh, digesting it for it's own needs. It is not acceptable for a creature that shares our living space, such as a dog, to have eaten a person's flesh and bone, but the difference is that it shares our communal living space. I wouldn't enjoy shooting the dog at all if that unlikely scenario happened, but wouldn't hesitate to do it either. Morally the dog should get a large bullet in the brain, not a painful or cruel death, as there is no logic to punishment when the verdict of ultimate sanction is decided. The principle of distributive deterrent effect doesn't apply to dangerous dogs. I would use the skill I have with a suitable gun to do the necessary thing, but it would be a nasty experience.

Now, a tiger in a zoo is not the same thing as a dog in a housing estate. It is a dangerous creature, taken forcibly from the remote part of the planet it evolved in, and caged artificially in Dublin for our momentary gratification. If we as a society think that is acceptable, then the tiger has done no wrong by doing what any tiger in the same situation would have done. It is a carniverous wild animal, which was presented with something that smelt edible. The tiger is segregated from society because of its nature, and this girl positively acted to overcome that physical segregation by climbing fences to get at it. If a member of our society interacted with the tiger in such an utterly imbecilic way, there is no moral case for harming the tiger in any way afterwards. To sanction the tiger would be to wrongly re-apportion the blame and rersponsibility to some extent, away from the idiot of a girl.
But we now live in a society where people want to have every sort of bizarre and extreme experience, and if it goes wrong, they want to blame somebody else. If they take up hang-gliding, they'll sue the hang-glider manufacturer if they crash into a mountain. Same applies to bungee-jumping, white water rafting, and now tiger-rubbing.

It is not nice to speak ill of somebody who is in hospital with a serious injury, but it needs to be said. Girlie, you're a blithering idiot of immeasurable stupidity. Live the rest of your life more wisely. You will have a mark to remind you. Pat no more tigers in life.

But lets end with the beauty issue. The people who say the tiger shouldn't be put down because they think it's BEAUTIFUL, are equally shallow, moronic, utterly scramble-brained dozy dorks as the fool who presumably patted it for the same reason.

Think it all out. Then decide for yourself. Goodnight.

Nuts