REXANO tiger When ministers and lobbyists meet, citizens beware George Jonas

When ministers and lobbyists meet, citizens beware

by George Jonas, CanWest Publications, May 17, 2007

News reports say authorities in British Columbia put to sleep, "humanely," a male tiger named Gangus last week. Why the death penalty? Well, poor Gangus, who lived on a game farm near 100 Mile House, B.C., had the misfortune of being in a playful or mischievous mood on the evening of May 11. He started taking swipes at the dress of Tanya Dumstrey-Soos, 32, who was standing outside his cage, saying good-night, as was her custom, to the animals at Siberian Magic, the game farm of her fiancé, Kim Carlton.

A cat might do the same thing, but Gangus was a tiger. His claws were designed for swatting bullocks, not mice. One swat, it seems, made contact with Ms. Dumstrey-Soos' leg, tearing open an artery. The couple's children, who witnessed the accident, tried but couldn't staunch the flow of blood. By the time an ambulance reached the remote farm in the interior of B.C., it was too late.

Is it wise to keep tigers in your backyard? Not if you ask me. I'd certainly try to talk my friends out of it.

I came face to face with my first tiger at an office party about 25 years ago and responded with a classic double-take, the kind you see in Laurel and Hardy movies. "Sorry to interrupt, old boy," I said to Marq de Villiers, in those days editor of the glossy magazine Toronto Life, with whom I had been chatting, "but a tiger passed by behind you."

Marq came from South Africa, had a calm disposition and some familiarity with wildlife. "Oh, a tiger," he said, without glancing around. "Yes, you often see them on Bay Street. Let me refresh your drink."

"Marq, I'm not kidding."

By then the startled exclamations from the hallway convinced my friend that I hadn't been too liberal with the grape. The tiger was sitting by the buffet table, looking at a wooden slab of smoked salmon and merrily switching her tail. She hadn't crashed Marq's party; she and her wrangler came by invitation of the publisher. The guests stood back, plates in hand, yielding readily to the tiger in the food-line. For all I know she may have been de-clawed, defanged, or lobotomized (I hope not) but she looked fit.

There are epochs when any self-respecting office party must have a tiger eyeing the smoked salmon at the buffet. The roaring 1920s were such a period; the self-centered 1980s were another. Other periods are less puerile -- or more puritanical. These days, in Toronto, a tiger at a party would get the host charged with criminal negligence.

Shouldn't it? Let's put it this way: I'd discourage many things I'd never outlaw: smoking, voting socialist...

Although we know that "hard cases make bad law," many of our laws are still generated by hard cases. The tragedy of an animal-loving woman bleeding to death in front of her children -- a hard case if there ever was one -- brings immediate and predictable calls for legislative interference. "This could all have been avoided with provincial legislation that bans the keeping of exotics by private citizens," Marcie Moriarty, general manager of cruelty investigations for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has been quoted as saying. And B.C. Agriculture Minister Pat Bell announced a meeting with the SPCA and environment minister Barry Penner to determine "how to prevent similar tragedies."

When ministers and lobbyists meet, citizens watch out. That's when one of your freedoms faces euthanasia.

Ms. Dumstrey-Soos undoubtedly liked tigers and Gangus may well have liked people. Are they both dead because people and wild animals simply don't mix, as officials and other busybodies like to assert? But that can't be, because people and wild animals have been mixing merrily since the dawn of history: that's why we have domesticated animals, not to mention falconry, working elephants, mine-detecting dolphins, and applied ethology. Or is it because whenever people and wild animals mix -- as beekeepers will attest -- they inevitably run some risk?

I think so -- and the risks are worth the rewards. I'm glad to have met the party tiger, just as I'm glad to have met the "Baron" de Heczey's cheetahs who used to walk alongside the one-time wrestling champion on Bloor Street. Or the surrealist painter Endre Szasz's ocelot in Toronto's posh Rosedale. And I feel sorry for my grandchildren who will only meet authorized tigers, cheetahs, and ocelots, in official zoos.

Originally published at George Jonas Website