Most people who are interested in such things have heard of the tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo, where one of the big cats managed to leave it's enclosure and attack some people. One person is dead, and two others are badly injured. This is terrible news, and my thoughts go out to the family which lost a loved one.
What many people seem to have missed is how police officers, armed with their handguns, managed to shoot and kill the predator while it was chewing on one of the still-living victims. By any criteria, that day is a credit to the San Francisco PD. A life was saved, a threat was dispatched, no rounds went astray, and all done under what must have been an extreme amount of stress.
I mean, I sure as heck wouldn't want to take on a 300 pound man eater with a 9mm. Would you?
There are a few things I want to bring to your attention.
First off, Breda has video of a house cat which can scale a sheer wall to get to a can of Fancy Feast. Does such climbing ability scale up so that tigers can perform similar feats and reach succulent zoo visitors? I wouldn't put it past the furry beasts.
But it appears that the cat in question didn't have to. Steven den Beste reports that the wall of the tiger enclosure was 4 feet lower than industry guidelines called for. He also has found photographic evidence of a protester who objected to how the police shot the tiger, even though it was chewing the face off of a young man at the time.
This is just one of many reasons why I don't like San Francisco.
I have written about how freakishly dangerous tigers are right here at The Handbasket in the past. Below is a YouTube video of an incident in 2004, where park rangers who were trying to trank a tiger had the tables turned on them.
How high did she leap? 12 feet or so? And I think ol' Tigger had some spring left in her bottom. A 14 foot wall should be doable.
What conclusions can we draw from this incident? Just that I am not going to visit the San Francisco Zoo unless they build the wall higher, or they let me pack in a howdah pistol.
Comments (4)
News reports are that the SF police carry .40 caliber pistols, not 9 mm. If those .40's were loaded with hollow points, then that's a lot more stopping power.
Posted by Steven Den Beste | December 28, 2007 1:00 PM
Posted on December 28, 2007 13:00
SFPD uses .40 caliber pistols, or at least, the Chronicle story stated so. Still going after a tiger with just handguns...courageous, or foolhardy? Guess it worked for them, but I would have brought the shotgun if I had access to one.
Or maybe they didn't use it because all they had was buckshot, and they didn't want to risk hitting the victim. If so, SFPD might want to consider putting some slugs in the cruiser's ammo load.
Posted by Heartless Libertarian | December 28, 2007 2:45 PM
Posted on December 28, 2007 14:45
That tiger video is cool, what beautiful creatures.
Posted by el duderino | January 3, 2008 11:27 PM
Posted on January 3, 2008 23:27
If that's all you've got, it's what you use.
Those big cats are incredibly dangerous. I think the official record holder in people-munching was from the Kumaon district of India. After eating around 200 people in Nepal, it moved there and finished up with an official number of 430-something before Jim Corbett shot her.
Posted by Firehand | January 7, 2008 11:10 PM
Posted on January 7, 2008 23:10