"From what I understand about the cat, it was one of his best... [It] took a love bite and happened to catch the wrong spot.... It was almost an act of God — some unforeseen thing."

Said the father of Ryan Easley, quoted in "Tiger Handler Linked to Joe Exotic Is Fatally Mauled by Tiger/Ryan Easley, 37, was performing at his family-run private zoo in Hugo, Okla., when a tiger attacked him, the authorities said. He was pronounced dead at the scene" (NYT).

Joe Exotic commented: "No one can blame the tiger for what happened. We all take risk in what we do and we don’t need further laws to ban tigers because of this because you can get killed doing just about anything."

2 lions, 2 tigers, a jaguar, and a bear escaped from their zoo enclosures in Germany today.

"Residents in surrounding areas were told to stay indoors until all animals were accounted for," the NYT reports.

It was not immediately clear how or when exactly the animals escaped, but heavy thunderstorms overnight had resulted in bad flooding across the zoo, which is on a riverbank. Some animals might have been swept from their enclosures.

All the animals were eventually found, and only the bear was shot dead. The cats all got tranquilized and returned to their rightful imprisonment. But some Germans were scared enough to self-imprison within their enclosures for a brief while.

Just by coincidence, yesterday, I watched this clip of Talking Heads doing "Animals," a song with lyrics that make me laugh, because stray, unserious paranoia is funny:

Animals think
They understand
Trusting them
A big mistake!
Animals want
To change my life
I will ignore
Animals' advice!...
I know the animals
Are laughing at us
Don't even know
What a joke is
I won't follow
Animals' advice
I don't care
If they're laughing at us

If you're going to be laughed at, you're going to want it to be by entities who know what a joke is, right?

After 4 days of avoiding Facebook altogether — my habit had been to click many times a day — I decided to drop in and see how it felt.

1. I haven't clicked yet, so my 4-day record is still intact, and I could keep going, but the purpose of avoiding Facebook hasn't been to achieve purity, but to become conscious of what was a clicking instinct that did not correspond to genuine feeling of reward. Having broken the unconscious instinct, I want to take a look — a somewhat objective look — at what I missed. I presume I'll spend about 5 minutes scanning what would have taken up much more than 5 minutes if I'd done it in little pieces across 4 days.

2. Okay. I've been there, scrolled through all the way back to where I was reading last time. Presumably, if I'd been visiting frequently, Facebook would have served up more items, but they'd have been worse things, right?, not better. I don't really know. For who has known the mind of the Facebook? I started timing myself with my iPhone stopwatch, but the insane rushing by of hundredths of a second strangled up my mind. I'll say I spent 5 to 10 minutes catching up.

3. What have I missed: cats, goats, a sloth in pajamas, a nonthreatening medical procedure, some charming kid-talk, speculation about accidental suicide from an apparently nonsuicidal person, a link to an article about cheese and drugs and the brain (which I'd already seen pointed at by Instapundit), an analogy involving relationships, and 4 things that I was moved to open in tabs.

4. The 4 things were: 1. "Cops realize tiger is stuffed animal after 45-minute standoff," 2. "Everything you should know about happiness in one infographic," 3. Something I'd already read, pretty much knew I'd already read, that I didn't need to read even the other time, and wasted 10 seconds deciding not to read again, 4. "What Would You Look Like As The Opposite Sex?"

5. #1 didn't really need a click. What Facebook displayed — the headline and a photo — was already all that you needed. It was amusing enough, but I've seen other Facebook posts about stuffed animals mistaken for real ones. #2 was the opposite of what its headline promised. The one infographic was a simple but indecipherable mess. What's the brain supposed to represent that's different from the faceless lady with a paintbrush sticking out of her head (and is that supposed to be a pregnancy bulging out of one side of her?)? #3 I already bitched about at point 4. #4 was a thing you could do if you "Login with Facebook." I was assured "We will never post without your permission." You will never post what without my permission, and why should I believe you?, and just when I thought I was out of Facebook, they pull me back in!

6. Okay. I survived my dip back into Facebook, and I think I'm out.

ADDED: A poll:

When I'm on Facebook, I'm most like...

a sloth in pajamas

myself as a member of the opposite sex

a person staring at a stuffed tiger thinking it's a real tiger

what an infographic depicts as unhappy

a nonsuicidal person thinking about suicide

the worst character in Steven Spielberg's worst movie

a baby goat tap dancing adorably on somebody's hardwood floor

pollcode.com free polls

A tiger was — who knows why? — roaming in Atlanta, Georgia.

"Unfortunately, it jumped a fence and went after a dog back behind one of the residences here. And the officers had to use some force to put the tiger down."

"But restaurants at Kings Romans [casino complex in Laos] still offered expensive plates of bear paw, pangolin... and sautéed tiger meat..."

"... which can be paired with tiger wine, a grain-based concoction in which the cats’ penises, bones or entire skeletons are soaked for months. When a group of foreigners showed up at the God of Wealth, Kings Romans’ fanciest restaurant, the suspicious proprietor told their translator, 'You can eat here, but do not ask for the special jungle menu' — the menu offering wildlife options. Nevertheless, the staff offered tiger wine for $20 a shot glass, and served a bear’s paw to patrons at a nearby table. In May, a photographer for The New York Times who visited the restaurant was offered plates of tiger meat for $45...."

From "Asia’s Illegal Wildlife Trade Makes Tigers a Farm-to-Table Meal" (in the NYT).

Worth going to the link if only to see the moronic man in the photograph with the caption "Tourists pose with tigers in an enclosure at Tiger World in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in May." (Yes, I know the tiger is heavily sedated. I'm not calling the man moronic for trusting the tiger not to maul him. He's moronic for indulging in that sort of travel, thinking well of himself as he poses, and dressing like that when the tiger is always arrayed in gorgeous fur.)

"When officers arrived at the home, they found several wild animals all roaming freely inside Meyer’s home, including three tigers, a cougar, a skunk and a fox..."

"... police said. They also found Meyer’s 14-year-old daughter in the home during that time, police said."

The news clip at the link doesn't mention the selfie angle to this woman's behavior, but here's the screen grab I made:

Was that a "racist" costume at the University of Wisconsin football game last night?

Here's the tweet that got it started:

At the @UWBadgers game and there is a man with a mask of President Obama and a noose. This is racism, why was this allowed into the stadium? pic.twitter.com/zKEqhdDYny

— 😏 (@woahohkatie) October 29, 2016

And I see the UW twitter feed immediately responded: "Thanks for letting us know— Can you tell us what section you took this photo in?" and "We don't support offensive image of a noose, but this is a form of free speech. Guest Services asked them to remove & they did."

And the UW quickly put out this statement:



It was the night of Freakfest, Madison's Halloween revelry downtown, and the early evening football game — a few blocks away from the Freakfest location — was part of a huge social occasion yesterday. (Meade and I holed up inside, watched the game on TV, and went to bed early as the sound of screaming revelers moved farther away from the stadium area to State Street.) So there were some costumes at the game, and as you can see from the statement, the rules were that you could wear a mask once you got inside the stadium.

I don't like depictions of lynching political figures. Here's an old post of mine expressing dismay over a sign picturing the lynching of Scott Walker. And later, I linked back to that post, saying "I said imagine how Democrats would react if Tea Partiers had... depict[ed] a Democratic Party politician as Hitler or with his head in a noose."

And I agree that there is a special problem with showing a black person with his head in a noose, given the history of lynching in America.

But take a closer look at that tweeted picture. See the hand with the peace sign? The person is facing away from the camera. The Obama mask is on the back of the head. We see the shape of a larger mask in front. And if you look closely at the pink sign, the words are Hillary Clinton's: "What difference at this point does it make?" I assume the mask on the front-side of the head depicts Hillary Clinton. And yes, poking around, I see this view of the front of the person. It is a big Hillary Clinton face, and there's another person with a big Trump mask and he's holding the other end of the rope. The rope-holding Trump is walking the noosed Hillary in the manner of Pozzo leading Lucky in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot":



I have no idea if the costumed football fans intended to allude to the Nobelist's great play in which no one gets lynched: 2 characters — Lucky and Pozzo — are connected by a noose that works as a leash, and the other 2 characters — Vladimir and Estragon — consider hanging themselves:

ESTRAGON: What about hanging ourselves?
VLADIMIR: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
ESTRAGON: (highly excited). An erection!
VLADIMIR: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
ESTRAGON: Let's hang ourselves immediately!

But I think the political theater in the football stadium was intended to express Hillary's criminality and/or Trump's use of the idea that Hillary is a criminal. It could simply be that Hillary and Trump are bound together in a horrible drama that's scaring us, Halloween style.

What, then, of the Obama mask on the back of the head? What a distraction! What does a mask on the back of the head mean? I see that a mask worn on the back of the head may be a device to ward off predators while your back is turned:

Arguing that [the Bengal tiger] only attacks people from behind, workers in the mangrove forests started wearing face masks on the backs of their heads. Thus far the trick appears to have worked.

Mandrakes, mangroves... don't think too hard. It's only Halloween. What is the meaning of the costumes? If you have a nonracist message, take the trouble to edit out the part that will allow viewers to say "That's racist" or they'll never hear whatever it is you are trying to say.

Or do you want to talk about freedom of speech law? I'll take the position that UW handled it pretty well. They conveyed the importance of free-speech values and stressed that they merely asked the person to remove the mask. They reasoned with him and he accepted their point of view — don't make other people feel afraid or disrespected — and he removed "the offensive parts of the costume." That is, he accepted the argument that parts of the costume were offensive and that it would be better not to offend. He bought what the university was selling in the marketplace of ideas. Or that's my working theory until somebody gives me reason to think he was coerced.

IN THE COMMENTS: 2 excellent corrections:

Gahrie said:

Not all lynching was racial. While the Democrats in the South did concentrate on lynching Black people during the Jim Crow era, in the Old West and historically, it was mainly White people who were lynched. 

Grimson said:

AA: 2 characters — Lucky and Pozzo — are connected by a noose that works as a leash

The text mentions only a rope, not a noose, so clearly these are not a couple of Beckett devotees.

Beckett: Enter Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo drives Lucky by means of a rope passed round his neck. . .

Thanks for both of those. Just to rebalance a little, I'll say: 1. In the mind of present-day Americans, lynching is most likely to be associated with the history of racial injustices, and 2. In the photograph of the "Godot" production I've used and in other productions I've seen pictures of, the rope was tied in the classic "hangman's noose" knot. But I can see, with further research, that the rope isn't always tied that way in productions of "Godot" and also see that in real life, nooses don't always have the "hangman's noose" knot and that a rope with a knot put around a man's neck is perhaps fairly called a noose even when the text omits that explicit characterization of the rope.

When you have an argument with your husband in the car, do you get out of the car? In an animal park? With tigers?

"Surveillance video that circulated widely online showed a woman exit a car, then walk to the other side of the vehicle, where she was attacked a few seconds later by a tiger. As the animal dragged her away, her husband and mother jumped out in an attempt to rescue her. The woman left the car because of an argument with her husband...."

The woman survived, as did the husband. The mother, however, died. 

I thought this was something that happens only in movies. The characters are going somewhere in a car and they just have to hop out of the car because of whatever the hell they are talking about. In real life — I've always thought — people just put up with being in the car together and try to get wherever they were going.

40 frozen tiger cubs found in a freezer at the Tiger Temple in Bangkok, where tourists get to interact with tigers.

The NYT reports.

The discovery came as Thai wildlife rangers were removing adult tigers from the temple in an effort to shut down the attraction after receiving complaints that the temple was trafficking in endangered species.... Tiger parts, while illegal to sell, are in high demand in Asia, particularly China, for use in traditional medicine....

The wildlife agency has been trying for months to shut down the Tiger Temple’s zoo. The temple has promoted itself as a spiritual center where people and tigers lived in harmony, and it has charged tourists as much as $140 apiece for the chance to bathe, hand-feed and play with the tigers.

Here's a slide show of tigers at the Temple. Captions: "Tigers cooled off in a pool at the Tiger Temple, an attraction in western Thailand that officials promote as a place where animals coexist with humans in Buddhist harmony. Conservationists accuse the temple of abuse and exploitation." "A monk accompanied tourists and staff members on a walk with one of the tigers. About 15 monks live on the grounds and have little to do with the tigers beyond occasionally posing with them for tourists." "A staff member taking photos for tourists. A standard ticket, which costs about $17, entitles a visitor to walk a leashed tiger and pose with a chained tiger."

From an earlier article (last month):

"I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt."

"I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt."

ADDED: This story of Walter James Palmer, the American dentist who killed Cecil the lion, got Meade playing the old Beatles song "The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill." We got to puzzling over the facts of the song, but there's no need to puzzle. They're set out quite nicely at Wikipedia:

This song mocks the actions of a young American named Richard A. Cooke III, known as Rik, who was visiting his mother, Nancy Cooke de Herrera, at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh at the same time that the Beatles were staying with the Maharishi. According to his mother, both she and her son maintained friendly relations with all of the Beatles except for Lennon, who by Cooke de Herrera's account was "a genius" but distant and contemptuous of the wealthy American Cooke de Herrera and her clean-cut, college-attending son. According to Nancy's life account, Beyond Gurus, the genesis of the song occurred when she, Rik, and several others, including guides, set out upon elephants to hunt for a tiger (allegedly presented by their Indian guide as a traditional act). The pack of elephants was attacked by a tiger, which was shot by Rik. Rik was initially proud of his quick reaction and posed for a photograph with his prize. However, Rik's reaction to the slaying was mixed, as he has not hunted since. Nancy claims that all present recognised the necessity of Rik's action, but that Lennon's reaction was scornful and sarcastic, asking Rik: "But wouldn't you call that slightly life-destructive?" The song was written by Lennon as mocking what he saw as Rik's bravado and unenlightened attitude.

Lennon later told his version of the story in a Playboy interview, stating that: "‘Bungalow Bill’ was written about a guy in Maharishi's meditation camp who took a short break to go shoot a few poor tigers, and then came back to commune with God. There used to be a character called Jungle Jim, and I combined him with Buffalo Bill. It's sort of a teenage social-comment song and a bit of a joke." Mia Farrow, who was also at the ashram during the period, supports Lennon's story in her autobiography; she writes, "Then a self-important, middle-aged American woman arrived, moving a mountain of luggage into the brand-new private bungalow next to Maharishi's along with her son, a bland young man named Bill. People fled this newcomer, and no one was sorry when she left the ashram after a short time to go tiger hunting, unaware that their presence had inspired a new Beatles song – 'Bungalow Bill.'"

Imagine the contempt if Rik had been a dentist!

AND: Bungalow Bill has a blog, and you can see a photo of him with the tiger and listen to his reminiscing about the incident here.

"The tiger is liquidated."

"An escaped zoo tiger was shot dead in central Tbilisi Wednesday after killing a man working on flood relief efforts, a Georgian Interior Ministry spokeswoman said...."

Tbilisi streets on Sunday turned into a big-game park after lions, bears, crocodiles and hyenas went on the loose after flooding destroyed the Tbilisi zoo. Many were shot or drowned. The luckier ones were recovered and returned to the zoo. A hippopotamus on Sunday roamed central Tbilisi Square before being shot with a tranquilizer dart in front of a Swatch store.

Georgian authorities had said Tuesday that the animals were accounted for. But there was finger-pointing Wednesday about why they had declared the all-clear....

5 men, trapped in a tree for 5 days, by 4 tigers.

Rescued!

Previously discussed here.

5 men trapped in a tree by Sumatran tigers — and it might take days to find the tree in the jungle.

"The group was attacked on Thursday after they accidentally killed a tiger cub. One man died while the others managed to flee up some branches. The survivors alerted nearby villagers using mobile phones."

Villagers had tried to rescue the men on Thursday but retreated when they saw at least four large Sumatran tigers circling around the base of the tree....

The six men, all from Simpang Kiri village in Aceh Tamiang district, had ventured into the national park in search of rare incense wood.

"People keep entering the jungle to look for the wood because it's very expensive," the police chief said. "But that's the risk: there are many tigers and elephants in Gunung Leuser jungle."

Wikipedia says: "The Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) is a rare tiger subspecies that inhabits the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It was classified as critically endangered by IUCN in 2008 as the population was estimated at 441 to 679 individuals...The Sumatran tiger is the only surviving member of the Sunda Islands group of tigers that included the now extinct Bali tiger and Javan tiger."

What is the "rare incense wood"? The article doesn't say, but I suspect it's agarwood, about which Wikipedia says: "agarwood, also known as oud, oodh or agar, is a dark resinous heartwood that forms in Aquilaria and Gyrinops trees... when they become infected with a type of mould. Prior to infection, the heartwood is relatively light and pale coloured; however, as the infection progresses, the tree produces a dark aromatic resin in response to the attack, which results in a very dense, dark, resin embedded heartwood...."

UPDATE: Rescued after 5 days in the tree.

The 25-year-old man who leapt from the zoo monorail into the tiger enclosure...

... had — on his Facebook page — this picture of a tigress licking the head of a tiger cub.

The Daily News calls it a "crazed bid to kill himself."

“He’s amazing and he loves everybody,” said the victim’s sister, who declined to give her name. “I really don’t know what happened.”

The Facebook page is full of sentimental notions about animals and the environment:

An image of foxes with the message, “We have more to fear from other people than from other animals” was also posted Thursday. In other posts he promotes a vegetarian diet.

Another image posted Thursday bears the message, “We need to stop being victims and living out of fear. We need to stop preparing for disaster, instead to anticipate a glorious future.”

UPDATE: The Daily News has now aligned its reporting with what I'm saying above: "Mauled man wanted to be 'one with the tiger' and was not  trying to commit suicide when he invaded Bronx Zoo den."

[David] Villalobos said he even petted the 400-pound beast after it tried to drag him off — and that he broke a leg and ankle when he landed after leaping from the zoo’s monorail on all fours, [Paul Browne, the NYPD’s chief spokesman] said.

“No one should be surprised he landed on all fours considering his passion for cats,” Browne added.

Suicide by tiger.

It's bad enough that human beings cage these magnificent animals in zoos. This is already exploitation. But to appropriate their grandeur for one's own scurrilous, self-murderous ends is truly disgusting.

Wu...

... through.

The Democrats can't have this tiger-suit-wearing target of accusatory phone messages attracting attention in the midst of all their woes.

A zoo tiger leapt over a 16' fence and mauled a man to death.

It happened in Hanoi.

Are you surprised? Consider this:

[Zoo] animals do not escape to somewhere but from something. Something within their territory has frightened them ... and set off a flight reaction. The animal flees, or tries to. I was surprised to read at the Toronto Zoo ... that leopards can jump up to eighteen feet straight up. Our leopard enclosure in Pondicherry was sixteen feet high at the back. I surmise that Rosie and Copycat never jumped out was not because of constitutional weakness but simply because they had no reason to. Animals that escape go from the known to the unknown--and if there is one thing an animal hates above all else, it is the unknown.

That's a passage many will recognize, from "The Life of Pi." I copied it out once before, in a post called "Jabari was wronged," about a gorilla who managed to climb the 15' concave wall of his enclosure.

Jabari — who was shot to death — had been taunted. Who knows what moved the tiger?

Does Obama have a pet? Does McCain have a pet?

Reading about Rush Limbaugh and his besotted fondness for his kitty cat, I realized we don't hear anything about the presidential candidates' pets. Usually, you hear about the pets... Socks this, Barney that. King Timahoe.

But I don't remember seeing any pet stories this time around. Do these men not have pets? Is this a new trend? Men without pets?

It turns out that Barack Obama, in fact, has no pets. McCain?

He’s got the usual dogs—four of them actually: two Yorkshire terriers, Lucy and Desi; an English springer spaniel, Sam; and a mutt, Coco—and a black-and-white cat named Oreo. But he also reportedly owns two turtles (Cuff and Link), three parakeets, and thirteen saltwater fish. And in the past he’s had guinea pigs, snakes, and “an iguana that Jack walked on a leash,” according to Vogue, plus a ferret. The ferret recently died of cancer, and though McCain called it “a very cute animal,” he also told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren in a joint interview with his wife that, “Rather than alienate the pro-pet constituency, I will remain silent about the loss of our ferret,” implying that perhaps Cindy was the impetus behind that acquisition. Indeed, Cindy seems to be more of an animal person than John. “She loves animals, just not always ones that I appreciate,” he told Vogue. It was Cindy who went out and bought the two terriers as she coped with their daughter Meghan's graduating college and leaving home. But McCain has proven his devotion to his pets: About five years ago, as the New York Times’ Caucus blog reported, Coco the mutt began choking (on either a treat or a piece of meat—memories differ), and McCain attempted a sort of doggie Heimlich. When that failed, McCain stuck two of his fingers down the dog’s throat and cleared the blockage, saving the dog.

***

Requisite ferret link. ("This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness.")

ADDED: What President had dogs named Sweet Lips, Scentwell, Vulcan, Drunkard, Taster, Tipler, and Tipsy? What President had, for pets, 2 tiger cubs? What President gave his dog the absurdly uncreative name Fido?

AND: Apparently, Obama promised he'd get his daughters a dog after the campaign is over, and the American Kennel Club ran a poll that determined that the breed he should get is.... poodle.

ALSO: I think poodle -- a large ("standard") poodle -- is a great dog choice, and it's probably what I would get. But I cannot picture an American male politician with a poodle. It doesn't have the right connotations... and not just because we associate it with a foreign country. (Bush has Scotties.) Mainstream Americans think bad thoughts about poodles, and the President has better things to do than to retrain our poodle-thoughts. Also, with poodles, you have to pick black or white. Obama can't do that! He could get 2, black and white, but that would seem as though he were trying too hard for symbolism. Yes, I know there are red poodles. Still... Maybe an American male politician could get a nice red labradoodle.

But wait. It's a dog for his daughters. I think those little girls should -- after all this -- get whatever dog or dogs they want. If they want to walk around holding little chihuahuas, they should do it. Or do they have their own image consultants, building their political careers, determining the precise dog that will say what's best to say?

"The polar bear and the tiger cannot fight."

Freud, from a book of aphorisms that I've been reading, very slowly, for years. Collected and categorized by W.H. Auden (and some other guy). Look, the whole thing is on line here. I love aphorisms. I wish I could blog entirely in aphorisms...

We boil at different degrees... On the heights it is warmer than those in the valley imagine...