Urine, Feces, and Marshmallows

It seems that the quarantine Netflix binge show this week, is called Tiger King. From the description I thought that I wouldn't like it. I am now hooked. Mark and I watched two episodes last night. It's like watching a slow motion car wreck. You can't look away. It has everything. Cults, sex, gay sex (So far nothing explicit.), tigers eating people, and some interesting white trash. We're talking missing teeth, missing limbs, missing self esteem white trash. The show is about people who have big cats in their possession, hence the title of the show. To support this love of big cats, these people open up their property as roadside zoos, and to gather help taking care of these cats, they lure in wayward losers.

 When I was a kid my dad used to take us to the zoo. Back then big time zoos were really no better than these roadside zoos. The zoo my dad took us to was Brookfield Zoo. It smelled like urine, feces, and marshmallows. Marshmallows because the zoo sold bags of them that we would then throw to the animals. It turns out that not only do bears love marshmallows, but so do giraffes, lions, monkeys, and me. We threw that garbage into all the animal enclosures. Thankfully, zoos are no longer like that. Most are trying hard to put their animals in more natural environments and no longer allow seven year old kids to throw junk food at them.

After only two episodes of Tiger King, I'm not sure how I feel about these big cat zoos. They seem to raise a lot of cubs. Lion cubs, tiger cubs, cougar cubs, but I kind of feel those cute little cats do not end up having a long and happy life. About twenty five years ago my friend Rudy called me and told me to come over to his house in Fort Lauderdale. Rudy had some acquaintance of his over, introduced me to him, and then told me to go look in the back yard. I slid the patio door open and stepped out by the swimming pool. Rudy said, "Over by the fence." There resting in the bushes was a most beautiful creature. "It's a ligar. Half lion, half tiger." Rudy tells me. Rudy's sketchy friend had brought it over. I looked over the shrubbery and then slowly backed into the house. What kind of crazy fucking moron would bring a wild animal into an urban neighborhood? I found it disturbing, but like feeding marshmallows to the animals at Brookfield, I kind of liked seeing it.