« Desi Retro Ad of the week: Fevicol :+: McCain picks Jindal as running mate »

Brown in America

Dhaliwals at it again

By: Santosh :+: Under: Brown in America
On: ⋅ March 31, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
Discuss in our off-topic forums

Looks like you are new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

One of the Dhaliwal brothers, Amritpal “Paul” Singh Dhaliwal, has been arrested on shoplifting charges. [link] (tip Runa)

The Dhaliwal brothers were attacked by a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day, 2007, which ended in the death of one of their friends, Carlos Sousa Jr. Other Über Desi posts on this topic (1,2)

This will surely reopen arguments on both sides of the aisle on whether the Dhaliwals are within their rights to sue the San Francisco Zoo. I maintain that those are two different issues. The Dhaliwals may very well turn out to be delinquents possessing very little moral characters and recent events probably stand testament to that. But that issue is different from the zoo’s responsibility to keep its animals within their enclosures.

Wild animals are just that, wild animals. They will attack when provoked and, on occasions, even unprovoked. This is an absolute truth just as the sun rises in the north. Bad joke, I know, but hopefully you get the point. We cannot blame the wild animals for attacking someone because it is in their nature to do so. Zoos bring humans in close proximity with wild animals. Being in the business of dealing with wild animals, zoos should be and are familiar with this eminent danger. The San Francisco Zoo contends the tiger got out because of provocation by the Dhaliwals. And that is where I throw up my hands and cry BS.

Did the Dhaliwals or Carlos Sousa Jr. enter the tiger’s enclosure? Did either one of them open the gates to the tiger’s enclosure? If you answered no to either question, how, in the name of sanity, did the tiger get out of its enclosure? My personal opinion of the Dhaliwals may be low, but this is a case where emotion has to be separated from cold hard facts.

This may be strictly anecdotal but bear with me. About three years back, I visited the Tallahassee Museum of Natural History, which in reality is also part-zoo, with my parents and new bride. Passing of time has made details of that day hazy but recollecting the incident as best as I can, while viewing the Florida panthers one of the panthers abruptly and without warning charged, what seemed like a 10 year old kid.

But the glass enclosure separated the panther from its quarry. As we stood there partially in awe and partially entertained, it struck me that I was extremely thankful that the panther’s enclosure held up because I was standing, not 10 feet away from the kid the panther was interested in. At that moment it did not matter if the kid provoked the panther or not, what mattered was that the panther was not able to get out. We’re talking about a 150 pound Florida panther here. FYI, tigers can be upto three times the size of panthers and move just as well. That is all the more reason to make sure a tiger must not get out of its enclosure.

In a meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee, the same opinion was rendered by the Zoological Society board chairman, Nick Podell.

Zoological Society board chairman Nick Podell told the committee, “Under no circumstances is it OK for an animal to escape.”
“I want to deliver a mea culpa for the zoo,” he said. “There is no excuse and the focus of the Zoological Society is to make sure it will never happen again.”

I concur.

Thoughts? Opinions?

« Desi Retro Ad of the week: Fevicol :+: McCain picks Jindal as running mate »
Discuss in our off-topic forums