Nothing says Christmas like a couple of young men getting mauled, and one killed, by a 350 pound tiger at the San Francisco Zoo. The twelve foot high wall was not enough to keep the tiger from attacking these three stooges. These late teens and an early 20 year old were almost certainly taunting this tiger. After two of the “victims” ran away while the feline was chewing on their friend, this driven animal went after the escaped taunters and found them in the café 300 yards away. This cat was no random killer, it was out for retribution. It was angry. The tiger was probably well aware of his capability to escape, maybe he was even in the habit of taking evening excursions, but up till this pivotal moment, he had dealt peacefully with his imprisonment, except for once, a few years before, when he mauled a zoo employee. Clearly this tiger was not completely satisfied with life in the zoo.
What animal, or human for that matter, would be satisfied with a life in a zoo? Speaking as a human representative, who lives in the zoo of western civilization, a prison without physical bars, I have to admit that sometimes I’m ready to go the way of the tiger.
Who do we think we are, keeping these majestic wild beasts in captivity for our entertainment? One of these days (not that this isn’t already under way), mother nature and the animal kingdom is going to turn completely against us. We are evolutionary masterpieces, by the nature of our minds, we are more ready to adapt to changing circumstances than most in the animal kingdom. One could almost say we were created as the stewards of the earth, and yet for the past few thousand years, maybe since we kicked ourselves out of a theoretical garden we are still technically in, and began treating it like a garbage dump, we have been bad little angels, and it’s about time for the tiger to begin biting us back.
Humans have been busy. It’s been act, act, act, for a long, long time, and we have so rarely stopped to think. But for all that action, we can expect reaction. What should we do?
We shouldn’t raise the fences in our zoos to keep from getting attacked by tigers, we should dismantle these zoos before the time of reaping comes completely to pass. The seeds of greed, selfishness, and unconsciousness have been sown, and now we have our crop, more greed, more selfsishness, and more unconsciousness, along with their side-effects: suffering, separation, cruelty, resentment, and death without freedom. But a new consciousness is also growing out of our dissatisfaction with this zoo.
There are tigers inside us all, and they long to be set free. This coming year is the year of the rat in the Chinese zodiac. This is fitting as it is our rat-faced President’s last year in office. But we should also remember some of the good traits of this marvelous little animal as its year approaches. Rats help us clean up our messes, they also take care of each other and live in close proximity with their neighbors, and contrary to our poor opinions of them, they are actually healthy, hearty, animals. Our ancestors would not get on boats if rats were not on board, as it meant that the ship was not sea-worthy. Rats are smart cowards, when things are not safe, they run, they change course. If only our rat look-a-like of a President acted a little more like he looks we wouldn’t be in a criminal war. We have rats to thank for the bubonic plague, like little grim reapers they helped eliminate overpopulation in Europe, without them there would never have been a renaissance.
Anyways, that’s the news in the animal kingdom. What conclusion can we draw? If we want to calm the tigers, we may have to start acting like rats.
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