Oops
Moronocy meets incompetence at the SF Zoo?
By Herald wire services | Friday, December 28, 2007 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Around the Nation
SAN FRANCISCO - The director of the zoo where a teenager was killed by a tiger acknowledged yesterday that the enclosure wall was only 12 feet - nearly four feet lower than the recommended height - as police looked at possible evidence the youths were taunting the big cat.
San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo said safety inspectors had examined the wall and never raised red flags. The Association of Zoos & Aquariums’ minimum recommended height for tiger exhibit walls is 16.4 feet.
“When the AZA came out and inspected our zoo three years ago, they never noted that as a deficiency,” Mollinedo said. “Obviously now that something’s happened, we’re going to be revisiting the actual height.” He said Wednesday the wall was 18 feet high.
Meanwhile, the SFPD is investigating the possibility one of the victims climbed over a waist-high fence and dangled a leg or other body part over the edge of the moat, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Evidence included a footprint on the fence and a shoe and blood between the gate and the edge of the moat, and sticks and pine cones in the moat that may have been thrown. The three victims, all young men from San Jose, were visiting the zoo together. Carlos Sousa Jr., 17, was killed and two unidentified brothers, ages 19 and 23, were injured.
“Somebody created a situation that really agitated her and gave her some sort of a method to break out,” said Mollinedo, who suggested dangling legs could be an incitement and a means of climbing out.
Teenagers messing with a tiger? No way.
Have to say, a local gorilla having got the better of his zoo, the old town’s zoo now having failed to contain its tiger, I’m not eager to go admire nature behind bars anytime soon. Always found zoos depressing anyway.
Topics: incompetence, moronocy, nature
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:06 am on Friday, December 28, 2007
8 Responses to “Oops”
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December 28th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
No words…except for what has been typed.
December 28th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Kids in San Francisco teasing wild animals?
San Francisco has a zoo??
The tiger got the death penalty???
I could understand if it was a bunch of 2nd amendment quotin’ pickup drivin’ Big Mac gobblin’ Jeebus lovin’ Red State morons, b’but, I thought all those caring and sharing types were smarter and certainly more sensitive than the rest of us.
December 28th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
They snuffed the tiger?
Look, it’s not to blame. It’s a tiger. It’s designed and programmed to kill things and eat them. It doesn’t have free will and moral judgment and moral responsibility like a human. That’s why you put it behind walls and moats–because it looks out at zoo patrons and thinks they’re groceries.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Apparently, some youths antagonized the tiger until it jumped a wall that was below the minimum recommended height and attacked them. The tiger was located sitting next to another victim it had mauled. As it moved towards police, it was killed.
The tiger had attacked another zoo keeper previously. We should not be keeping animals locked up for our viewing pleasure and we should not be weeping over animals who are killed so that humans can move about safely.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:21 am
These were not adolescents. The youngest was 17, the oldest 23. I would ask what we are doing that gives young men this age the idea that it is safe to taunt a tiger, in or outside a cage.
Darwin wins again.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Somewhere, I’d gotten the wrong idea that the tiger was recaptured and then put down. Obviously, if it was loose and threatening people, the cops had to do what they did.
December 29th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Then there was this classic from 1999 involving Binky the Polar Bear. I remember this one. Anchorage residents being tougher customers than the People’s Republic of San Francisco, the consensus was that if teenagers wanted to be stupid, the zoo should economize on bear chow. There was a rap song, dedicated to “Bad Blood Binky”:
Drink a case of Bud
and act real cool
like a teenage mutant brain-dead fool!
and a T-shirt, showing Binky, photographed thru a telephoto lens so he looked about 9′ wide by 9′ tall, wandering around with a sneaker in his mouth, and the slogan, “Binky for Governor: Take a bite out of crime!”
December 29th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Think of all the chaos that could have been caused if the more militant strain of animal rights activists let all of these animals around San Francisco.
“The monkeys and gorillas are flinging around poo in the Tenderloin District! Tigers have been snacking on the Board of Supervisors for the past three hours! The Castro is overrun with donkeys and elephants…and it isn’t even election day! The animal bears have the human bears cornered in the leather bars! Oh, fie, we must engage in a mass engaging of the fetal position, and pray that Gavin Newsom has a solution…wait, he was buggered by a group of prarie dogs? Sound the alarms! This is worse than 9/11!”