r.i.p. tatiana

…worth reading the whole thing:

Mourning the loss of Tatiana the tiger
by Patricia Briggs, San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, March 3, 2008

As a San Francisco Zoo visitor for the past 30 years, the heart-wrenching story of Siberian tiger Tatiana and the three young male visitors seemed all too reminiscent of some teenage school groups, many with boorish males, who come to the zoo for all the wrong reasons: for teasing and laughing at the animals who are completely at their mercy. The survivors of this event reportedly admitted to doing just that. It is tragic that a human life was lost, but this whole episode was colored by the context in which it occurred.

When all is said and done, this issue is not so much about the exhibit wall or moat size, as it is about intense emotion in animals, no different than in the human animal who responds impulsively in the "heat of passion" to a stimulus that imbues super strength.

An animal, once used to familiar surroundings, feels secure and wants to stay in them. The lion and tiger grottos at the San Francisco Zoo are part of the old Works Progress Administration exhibits built for big cats. In more than half a century of countless inspections - and nothing terrible like this happening - this catastrophe seems but a freak accident. One has yet to hear of anything tragic happening elsewhere, which begs the question: How safe can a zoo build its barriers without becoming a correctional facility? If someone had left open a back door and a potentially dangerous animal got out, that would be another story altogether.

As much as it is an outrage that a member of a critically endangered species lost her life, it is an equal outrage that not a single word was said of her or her kind. We humans tend to go into hiding when we want to talk of the death of a nonhuman animal when the death of a human animal is associated with it. This is wrong.

Many zoo visitors felt profound sorrow for losing beautiful Tati in such a violent way. They also felt sorry for her companion, Tony, who lost his mate. Others spoke of prosecution under the federal Endangered Species Act, arguably the greatest landmark legislation, wherein the tiny snail darter, a humble fish with no commercial value, prevailed over the mighty Tennessee Tellico Dam. For once, we anthropocentric humans could see beyond the word "resource" and embrace wildlife within the moral arena for being, as John Muir would state, merely "good for themselves."

Siberian tigers, being high profile megafauna and the largest living felid, have not fared better for their appeal. The flourishing, lucrative Asian medicinal trade as well as intense logging in their frigid, mountainous, forested Russian and Chinese range have all but destroyed them. Losing Tatiana was doubly tragic as she would be on breeding loan to propagate her kind.

Last and certainly not least, we must invoke the language of the basic anti-cruelty statute: "... every person who overdrives, overloads, drives when overloaded, overworks, tortures, torments ... any animal, is, for every such offense, guilty of a crime punishable as a misdemeanor or as a felony or alternatively punishable as a misdemeanor or a felony and by a fine of not more than $20,000."

The San Francisco Department of Animal Care and Control is responsible for enforcing the state humane laws. Now that the evidence is in, District Attorney Kamala Harris must be persuaded to act. This case has reached the end of the beginning; now the beginning of the end must be about justice for Tatiana.

Patricia Briggs is a San Francisco resident and a former zoo docent.

[Editor's Note: Chronicle photo digitally altered to create illustration.]