The Tiger Attack

For some reason, I am fascinated with the story of the Tiger attack on three young men in San Francisco on Christmas Day. The tiger escaped from his pen, killed one young man and mauled two others before being shot by police.

My first reaction was to sympathize with the tiger and criticize the young men, who were probably taunting the tiger. There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest taunting, such as (1) the fact that young men, aged 17, 19, and 23, were even going to the zoo. Men that age often do dumb stuff; (2) they were there on Christmas Day, around closing time, which could suggest that they planned to be there on a day and time when there would not be many people there; (3) there is some evidence that things had been thrown into the tiger pen, like rocks and sticks; (4) a shoe print on top of a short retaining wall. If some idiot taunted the tiger and got killed, my reaction was that Darwin was right and it is a good thing that an idiot like that it removed from the gene pool.

As more news comes out, however, it appears that the zoo was somewhat negligent. It appears that the walll across the moat was only 12 feet high, which could be reached by a tiger, especially if a leg was dangling over the edge. The tiger had attacked a zookeeper before, so the zoo had some notice that the animal was dangerous. I think it is quite likely that the boy's parents will sue the zoo and the city of San Francisco for negligence, and although I do not know California law on comparative negligence, it seems to me that the boy's family has a reasonably good case. Because the boy's parents are divorced, it will be brought on behalf of the boy's estate and the parents will proably split a settlement 50/50.

In my reading about this case, I was referred to the book "The Life of Pi," a novel by Yann Martel, about a young man who is stranded on a small boat with a large Bengal tiger. I have just started reading it, but so far it is outstanding and I can see why it won the Booker Prize in 2002 for outstanding English fiction. I had heard of this book when it was first published--the title character is named Piscine, but he takes the nickname "pi" after the number because it is easier to pronunce.