Save the Tiger

Is the UK government protecting the rights of immigrant man-eating tigers over those of British citizens in another example of ‘two-tier justice’? The issue has been ignited by a recent article in venerable conservative weekly The Onlooker which questioned why a tiger which had savaged an intruder to its cage to death at a zoo, hadn’t been destroyed. “Unfortunately, this is just typical of the left’s soft approach to immigration,” the article claimed. “You can guarantee that if it had been some asylum seeker who had been savaged to death by an indigenous British mammal, like a badger, for instance, they would have been out gassing every badger sett in a fifty mile radius, to make sure that they’d gotten the offending beast! But, obviously, this tiger is an Asian immigrant, so all they do is check that it didn’t break any teeth or suffer food poisoning, pat it on the head and send it on its way!” According to the article, the treatment of the killer tiger is simply the latest example of the favourable treatment handed out to invasive species by the UK authorities, questioning why the government doesn’t have armed ‘death squads’ hitting every UK park and woodland, exterminating grey squirrels. “Just like our cities, Britain’s green spaces have been overtaken by foreign invaders with their alien ways,” asserted The Onlooker. “The native red squirrel has been pushed into exile, existing only in the inhospitable margins, like the Isle of Wight.”

The periodical’s story has, unsurprisingly, left some sections of the media exasperated, who have pointed out that the tiger was actually born in captivity in the UK. Some have also questioned the periodical’s motivation for publishing the item. “Screaming headlines about ‘why is a tiger’s life worth more than a human’s?’ are just typical of the way in which Britain’s right-wing dominated press try to divert attention away from the real issues to completely irrelevant nonsense pushing their racist agendas,” declares Ron Wicklecombe, Political Editor of the Sunday Bystander. “I mean, it’s great to see The Onlooker, that Nineteenth Century Gentleman’s Club masquerading as a periodical –  having its finger firmly on the pulse of the nation! I mean, yeah sure, energy bills are soaring, pushing the cost of living to new levels, there’s a madman in the White House helping this crisis along with his Middle Eastern war, black clad gangs of racists are on the UK’s streets trying to intimidate anyone trying stop immigrants from drowning, but they just know that what we really want to know is why that tiger that mauled that guy to death hasn’t, itself, been shot.  Yes indeed, it’s the burning issue of the day!”

Others, however, feel that The Onlooker’s approach needs to be seen in in the context of its dwindling readership. “You have to understand that, maybe, it is the burning issue of the day for their readers,” muses George Hynston, columnist for the Daily Norks. “Who probably lament, as they sit in front of a roaring fire in their wing-backed leather chairs, the good old days when a chap could go over to India, saddle up an elephant and blast away at the local tiger population on the pretext that one of them might be a man-eater.” But, as Wicklecombe points out, the specific incident to which the periodical’s article refers represents an entirely different situation. “For one thing, the tiger didn’t actually eat anyone.  More significantly, the fact is that an individual chose to enter the tiger’s enclosure at a wildlife park – the outcome was inevitable.  Big cats are very territorial and see any such incursion into their space as a threat to be chased off and/or eliminated.,” he says. “Under such circumstances, why should the tiger be made to suffer because of the unfathomable decisions of an errant human? It isn’t like when an out-of-control dangerous dog makes an unprovoked attack on someone on the street, under such circumstances it is clear that the animal is a danger to the public.  But when the beast is confined behind bars with warnings to people not to enter the cage, then it can’t be deemed a threat to the public at large.”

Indeed, Wicklecombe believes that, rather than seeking to punish the tiger, The Onlooker should recognise that he is as much a victim in the incident as the man he mauled to death and offer its sympathy. “Surely, as a publication based around conservative philosophy, they should be in favour of people being able to make unilateral choices,” he contends. “Well, while we obviously, have no idea as to why this guy decided to do what he did – and I’m not going to speculate as to his motivation – but, while acknowledging the tragedy of the situation, the fact is that he made a choice to enter that enclosure and provoke a confrontation. The tiger, however, was effectively denied a choice as to its response – it simply did what tigers do. So, while The Onlooker should celebrate the victim’s exercise of choice, it should also lament the tiger having its choices denied.”

Conservationists have also condemned The Onlooker’s approach to the issue. “I remember some years ago in the US, a small child somehow got into a gorilla enclosure.  Despite the gorilla showing absolutely no aggression toward the child and presenting no obvious threat, it was summarily executed by the authorities before they rescued the child,” Fran Proctal of the ‘Green Brigade’, a radical environmental group recently designated a terrorist organisation by the UK government, wrote in Death to the Hunters Weekly, a similarly banned publication.  “I mean, I know that the Yanks are kill crazy and obsessed with public executions, but I can’t help but feel that there had to a better way of dealing with the situation which didn’t involve the murder of a primate.  Let’s not forget that. like that tiger, the gorilla is an endangered species, for God’s sake. We can’t afford to be knocking them off willy nilly on the slimmest of pretexts, whereas people are plentiful. We can afford to have a few of them eaten by endangered species.”