You Can't Beat A Tiger With A Stick!

This blog is in response to the recent Siberian Tiger attack at a wildlife park near Beijing.

On March 7, 2009, it was reported that a three men were hiking along the Great Wall of China when they decided to take a short cut that landed them in the Badaling Wildlife World Tiger enclosure. Once inside the enclosure, a Siberian tiger pounced on one of the men knocking him down and clamping its jaws around his throat. Luckily the two other men escaped.

So today, a co-worker and I pondered about how we would have reacted in this situation being one of the two men who had the option to escape. My first response, which I believe to be completely honest, is to hall ass back to the fence we climbed in on. For the sake of argument, my co-worker stated that move would be completely wrong. He claims the correct procedure would be to find a stick or “something” and beat the tiger until he let the guy with his face in the tiger’s mouth go. My response to him is “You can’t beat a tiger with a stick”. Let’s be realistic about the situation if you pick up a stick and hit a 500 pound Siberian tiger, no matter how big the stick is, it’s only going to make the tiger mad. The tiger may release the victim but the victim is in no shape to run to safety and you are now the tiger’s main focus. This leads to a new predicament, for you to get away from a tiger that’s hunting you. NEWSFLASH: You can’t out run a tiger either.

I feel sorry for the family for their loss of a loved one to a tiger being a tiger but for the three men to ignore several warning signs that stated Beware of Predatory Animals there is no excuse. You can’t blame the tiger. To paraphrase Katt Williams, if you’re a grown man and you get killed by a tiger in the zoo than I feel God’s Will has been done, that’s exactly what’s suppose to happen.