Sept 22nd, 2019 : Tyger

[xoxoxoBruce]

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

A house cat can put a hurtin’ on you and the bigger the cat the worse it gets, Bobcats, Panthers, leopards and Lions... you be dead.
But despite the Lion’s claims the Tiger is the king of the beasts. It can run, it can climb, it can swim, I once saw a video of a tiger
attacking a man who was riding a large elephant. It didn’t even bother to attack from the rear or the side, it came right up over
the elephants head.



I’m grateful Tigers are an Asian problem, we only have to worry about Mountain Lions, and Bears... amirite?
Wrong, big juicy cat food. In the United States? Tigers? But that’s just a few in zoos.

In the Asian forests and savannas that are their natural habitat, wild tiger populations have plunged, leaving fewer than 4,000 of the majestic creatures slinking toward extinction. In the United States, all tigers are labeled as endangered species. But because most of the animals are crossbred “generic” variants of wild tigers and considered not relevant to conservation, the government has been slow to get involved.

The mishmash of laws and spotty monitoring have led to wildly divergent population estimates for captive tigers in the United States. Fish and Wildlife says the total “likely exceeds the numbers found in the wild.” The Humane Society of the United States estimates that there are 5,000 to 7,000 caged tigers in this country. In 2016, the Feline Conservation Federation, which advocates for private ownership, used public records and sources in the exotics community to come up with 2,330 tigers.

One operation in Wynnewood, OK, was making a lot of money from people wanting to pet the cubs.

On good days, Passage told The Post, 200 families would come to the park, and 75 percent of them paid $45 to $55 for short “playtimes” with tiger cubs. “It was a huge draw,” he said. “It did pay the bills.”

The problem is it’s only safe(relatively) with cubs 4 to 12 weeks old so you have to resupply the cache and find something to do
with the older cubs. That results in a “puppy mill” like operation plus black market sales. A number of organizations have been
critical of the OK operation, so much so he lost a number of contracts to supply tiger shows around the country. Then he was
convicted of paying hitmen to kill two of his critics.


Those are just the ones moved above board.
Tigers are like dogs to officials, if it’s not purebred with papers it’s a mutt and useless for any legitimate purpose.

For decades, Fish and Wildlife paid no attention to cats like Spunky or Abraham — "generic" mutts that make up the majority of tigers born and raised in the United States. The agency's domestic-tiger concerns centered on pure subspecies, nearly all of which are now believed to live in facilities accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, or the AZA.
Its zoos hold about 275 tigers, and most are part of managed “survival programs” for three subspecies: Amur (formerly known as Siberian), Sumatran and Malayan. The idea is to have backup populations in case wild tigers disappear.

That means the law enforcers don’t care until one shows up in their neighborhood then they get all NIMBY and shoot it or look for
one of these shady places to take it away. But there has been increased pressure on these under the radar tiger collectors/traders
so they are taking evasive action. Some are claiming tigers as Emotional Support Tigers. I wonder what the airlines will say to that?


The other route is moving to Ligers, Tigons, and now Tiligers, which don’t come under Federal Laws.

Wiki says... The Tiliger is a second generation hybrid from a male tiger (Panthera tigris) and a ligress (which is the hybrid offspring of a lion and a tigress).
Although male ligers and tigons are sterile, female ligers and tigons can produce cubs. As with ligers, tiligers grow to a size that is typically larger than either of their lion and tiger forebears. Large males can grow up to 600 kg (1323 lbs) and total length 5.5 meters (18 ft) in length, while the females may grow weight 300 kg up to 360 kg(661 to 794 lbs) and up to 4 meters (13 ft) in length.

Since they aren’t real Tigers I feel so much safer now, I hope one doesn’t carry off my truck.

link

[fargon]

Kitteh good.

[gtown]

Here's the full story on that Oklahoma operation:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/article...man-gone-wild/

He called himself the Tiger King and plastered his face on highway billboards in Texas and Oklahoma. He bred big cats, bears, baboons, and more. He lived, with a parade of partners, on the grounds of his private zoo. He threatened a rival with murder—repeatedly, on YouTube—and tried to hire a hit man to do the deed.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That was interesting, it filled in some of the details the Wapo story left out. A couple years ago a buddy who lives in Dallas sent pictures of he and his wife in an enclosure with at least one big tiger. I sent him a link to that story and asked if they were at the place in OK. He said no, it was in Dallas and it was a traveling magic and big cat shown. Sounds like the guy.

[Griff]

I'm really more of a dog guy.

[Diaphone Jim]

Ole Joe had a pretty exciting go there for a while.
Never did get around to his sentence.