Tiger Shot, Killed Near Reagan Library|Richard_F|richard@cfz.org.uk|02/24/05 at 21:40:07|richard_f|xx|0|81.154.199.138|Tiger Shot, Killed Near Reagan Library
Wed Feb 23, 4:41 PM ET
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By LAURA WIDES, Associated press Writer
LOS ANGELES - Authorities shot and killed a tiger Wednesday that had been roaming the hills near the Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) Presidential Library.
Photo
AFP/File Photo
AP Video Loose Tiger Killed Near Homes, Remains Airlifted
(AP Video)
The cat was shot several hundred yards from soccer and baseball fields at the edge of a housing development, said Lorna Bernard, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Game.
"It's unfortunate that we had to kill it," Bernard said. "It's even more unfortunate that the person who owned it didn't come forward and alert us immediately. We might have been able to capture it."
Trackers had to shoot to kill because a tranquilizer would have taken five to 10 minutes to bring down the animal, Bernard said. They were concerned the animal might attack them or bolt onto a nearby highway. The animal was killed near Simi Valley, about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Authorities received a call just after 6 a.m. from a resident who reported the tiger strolling past his back fence. He said his children took pictures from inside their home.
Ken Tucker told KCBS-TV the tiger walked to a nearby house and "was just staring down" the neighbor's dogs.
The trackers had been looking for the animal for eight days, using infrared equipment at night. They had set traps with goat meat and chicken.
The hunt began after the discovery of paw prints on a ranch near the library that were far too large for native bobcats or mountain lions. The size of the tracks indicated the animal weighed as much as 600 pounds.
Bernard said the owner could have told authorities about the tiger's temperament and eating habits, which might have helped them catch the animal sooner.
As the cat roamed the hills, it became hungrier and disoriented, making it more dangerous to the nearby community of horse ranches and sprawling homes.
Authorities said they were investigating how the cat got loose in the hills.
"Obviously we'll be looking at all the facilities in the area that housed big cats," Bernard said.
Two weeks ago, authorities removed nearly two dozen large cats, including lions and tigers, from property rented by Abby and Emma Hedengran not far from the library, Bernard said. All the animals that inspectors found on the property were accounted for, she said.
A telephone message left Wednesday for the Hedengrans by The Associated Press was not immediately returned.
Tests will be performed on the tiger that may provide clues about its history. ||
Re: Tiger Shot, Killed Near Reagan Library|Richard_F|richard@cfz.org.uk|03/10/05 at 13:00:04|richard_f|xx|0|81.154.199.136|
From the Los Angeles Times: February 23, 2005
Tiger Shot and Killed Near Reagan Library
By Amanda Covarrubias, Times Staff Writer
An elusive tiger that prowled through Ventura County near the Ronald Reagan
Presidential Library was killed this morning in Moorpark, but its origin
remains a mystery.
The tiger, weighing between 400 to 600 pounds, was sighted walking behind
the houses and through the ravines around Highway 23. Nearby is Miller Park,
with well-used soccer fields.
According to Troy Swauger, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and
Game, the tiger was spotted about 6:30 a.m., walking through the yard of the
Tucker family.
"It was old and tired-looking. It was walking along our fence and then went
to our next-door neighbor's yard," Mary Tucker said.
"It was just a weird thing to see him in our backyard," husband Ken Tucker
said.
Authorities were called and fired four shots at the big cat. It was not
known how many hit the animal, Swauger said.
Some critics questioned why the tiger was killed and not tranquilized.
"With all this time to track it and all these options they could draw on,
you have to ask the question, was it really necessary to kill the tiger?"
asked Madeline Bernstein, president of the Los Angeles branch of the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Swauger defended the shooting.
"If the cat got out of the area, there's no telling what could have
happened," he said. "Using a tranquilizer gun was an option that was
available, but the safety of residents and motorists was of great concern."
Officials were investigating from where the tiger came, Swauger said. They
will contact those having exotic pet permits in the area, but it is possible
that the animal was illegal.
On Feb. 8, residents reported paw prints, setting off a series of warnings
that a dangerous big cat was on the loose. By Feb. 15, officials said the
print, about 6 inches at the pad, appeared to match other tracks found about
eight miles away, near the Reagan Library near Simi Valley.
The search area was expanded Tuesday and three teams - each consisting of a
state game warden and a U.S. Department of Agriculture tracker - began
looking for evidence of a large cat farther west, in an area near Leisure
Village in Camarillo.
Two other teams continued to inspect the original location near Highway 23
and Olsen Road, between Moorpark and Simi Valley. There, officials placed
three traps, two with stillborn calves and one with a combination of chicken
and goat meat.
A Ventura County sheriff's helicopter with infrared sensors was also used in
the search.
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Re: Tiger Shot, Killed Near Reagan Library|Richard_F|richard@cfz.org.uk|03/10/05 at 13:10:25|richard_f|xx|0|81.154.199.136|No lie: That 'tiger' may be a liger
Robin Abcarian, Times Staff Writer
February 25, 2005
Napoleon Dynamite would be so relieved. The massive feline on the loose in the Simi Valley veld was not a liger.
It was a tiger, now a very dead tiger. The mystery ended Wednesday morning, when the creature, spotted near an elementary school, was shot and killed by law enforcement officials.
Earlier in the week, Patrol Capt. Roland Takayama of the California Department of Fish and Game ignited imaginations when he speculated on a National Public Radio show that the giant cat, who had eluded officials for eight days, was "either a lion or a tiger, and some people have thrown the theory out that it's a liger, a hybrid of the two."
"A mix of a lion and a tiger?" asked "Day to Day" host Madeleine Brand. "It's not like a jackalope? It's a real thing?"
"Yeah," said Takayama. "It's a real thing."
This may have come as news to fans of "Napoleon Dynamite," the cult movie that stars the world's nerdiest, Tater Tot-loving high school student. In one of the movie's best loved and oft-quoted scenes, Napoleon is drawing a mythical creature with stripes, a mane and rhino-type horns down its spine. "A liger," he explains. "It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed ... bred for its skills in magic." In chain stores that cater to adolescents, such as Hot Topic, T-shirts featuring Napoleon Dynamite's rendering of the liger have sailed off shelves. Online boutiques have many versions.
The writer and director of "Napoleon Dynamite," 25-year-old Jared Hess, said he was inspired by a strange event that took place near his hometown of Preston, Idaho, 10 years ago.
"There was a really weird commune or cult and they were breeding ligers," he said by phone from Buenos Aires, where he was shooting a commercial. "It was called Ligertown, USA. The humane society or some animal rights group found out about the horrible conditions that the ligers were living in and they, or maybe the owners, set them free one night. There were all these ligers running around our farming community for a couple days. My brothers had a football game and they could hear all these sirens and gunfire."
Actually, according to news reports from the time, Ligertown was a two-acre compound owned by a couple who were eventually convicted on charges of animal cruelty and creating a public nuisance. Nineteen big cats were killed and 27 others found refuge at the Wildlife Waystation in Angeles National Forest. It's unclear how many of the animals were ligers.
"Since we shot the film in Preston," said Hess about the Idaho set location, "of course Napoleon would be interested in what he would consider supernatural creatures or cross-breeding between different species, and the science and fantasy behind it all."
Jon Heder, who played Napoleon, drew the liger featured in the film, after taking input from some of the local teenage extras about what a liger should look like. "He's a pretty good artist," said Hess of Napoleon. "He's studied animation." The horns on the spine, said Hess, are "battle spikes."
No one seems to know how many real ligers there are. Public zoos don't keep them and will barely acknowledge their existence. And they don't occur in nature. In fact, they are a more or less deliberate act of creation, much like the mule is a deliberate pairing of the donkey and the horse. (Why it's not called a "honkey" or a "dorse" is anyone's guess.)
"I don't know much about ligers," said Takayama. "They look real stupid and goofy to me. Like a washed-out tiger or a lion that doesn't look right, with faint stripes."
Tell that to Tippi Hedren, caretaker of a stunning, 15-year-old liger named Patrick. Patrick, who weighs nearly 700 pounds, lives at the Shambala Preserve in Acton, having arrived there some five years ago from a private zoo in Illinois. "Everybody loves him," said Hedren. "We treat him like he's wrapped in cotton batting. He seems to have a great capacity for love. He's a very benevolent animal."
Patrick, said Hedren, has behavioral characteristics of both species. "He speaks both languages," she said. "He roars like the lion ... and chuffs like a tiger. He has this great basso profundo chuff."
Like all ligers, Patrick is the product of a lion father and a tiger mother. Cubs born to tiger fathers and lion mothers are called, yes, tigons. Most such hybrids are assumed to be sterile, the way mules are, but this is not always the case. Some years ago, said Hedren, she had a tigon named Noelle who lived in a compound with other cats.
"We had been told by a couple of veterinarians - red-faced later, I might add - that she was sterile. So we did not put Noelle on birth control. We noticed she was having a coochie-coo relationship with a tiger."
Some months later, Noelle surprised everyone. "She gave birth under a big red bus," said Hedren. "There was all kinds of noise and we thought a domestic cat was being murdered." Instead, it was a big entrance for a cub, which she called a "ti-tigon" for its three-quarter tiger, one-quarter lion heritage.
Martine Colette, founder of the Wildlife Waystation, has two female ligers, one from Ligertown. "One is exceedingly shy and hates people. The other is as friendly as a dog." Lions, she said, are social creatures. Tigers are not. "You can see a little behavior of each in both of mine."
Although ligers exist, there does not appear to be any such creature as a liger expert. The San Diego Zoo's cat experts said through a spokeswoman that they didn't have anything to say about ligers. The director of conservation and science at the Fort Worth Zoo would not even speculate about why anyone would cross a lion and a tiger. "Our goal," said Tarren Wagener, a lion specialist, "is to preserve the species."
However, Ron Tilson, director of conservation for the Minnesota Zoo, was less reticent. Creating a liger, or a tigon, he said, "is the production of freaks by people who have freaky minds. It's abominable to think that this sort of thing is somehow made into a movie or a cult icon when, in fact, what it represents is these dirty little sideshows in circuses with bearded ladies or two-headed dogs. This is not about nature . it's about mischievous lowlifes."
Lions and tigers are biologically similar enough that they can mate and have done so in captivity. In the wild, their paths don't generally cross.
No one is able to estimate with authority a liger's lifespan. It seems to be shorter than those of a lion (up to 25 years in captivity) or a tiger (up to 20 years in captivity). "We haven't had them around long enough to know what their longevity might be," said Colette.
In any case, plenty of people would have no idea what they were looking at even if they came face to face with a liger.
"What I have found is that the average person wouldn't know a lion from a tiger," said Colette. "And I regret to tell you that. Watching tours coming through this facility, you wouldn't believe the number of people who look at the tiger and say, 'Look at the lion!' "
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Re: Tiger Shot, Killed Near Reagan Library|Richard_F|richard@cfz.org.uk|04/04/05 at 18:25:05|richard_f|xx|0|81.153.207.194|Couple Arrested in Tiger's Escape
* The Moorpark animal sanctuary owners denied the cat belonged to them
while it roamed suburban areas. Trackers killed it Feb. 23.
By Amanda Covarrubias and Hugo Martín, Times Staff Writers
The owners of a Moorpark animal sanctuary were arrested Wednesday for
allegedly allowing a 352-pound Siberian tiger to escape and prowl suburban
neighborhoods for four weeks while denying the cat was theirs.
Gert "Abby" Hedengran, 56, and his wife, Roena "Emma" Hedengran, 52, were
taken from their rented ranch in Moorpark about 10 a.m. Wednesday and
transported in a government van to U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
Abby Hedengran was charged with making false statements to federal
officials, submitting false records, destroying evidence in a federal
investigation, obstructing justice, witness tampering, and violating the
federal Animal Welfare Act. Emma Hedengran was charged with obstructing
justice and witness tampering.
The couple were expected to be released on $25,000 bail each, but Assistant
U.S. Atty. Joseph Johns said he planned to ask for a psychiatric evaluation
of Emma Hedengran because she is suspected of attempting to shoot her
husband Feb. 17 during an argument at their home.
The Hedengrans, who were rousted from bed early Wednesday by agents serving
a search warrant, had not yet hired an attorney and were not available for
comment.
Authorities also were looking into the possibility the tiger had spooked two
horses the morning of Feb. 12 in the Santa Rosa Valley. According to police
records, the horses broke through the rail of their corral and ran onto
Santa Rosa Road, where a passing car hit one of the horses.
The male driver bled to death before he could be extricated.
Meanwhile, another car hit the wreckage, causing her vehicle to roll over.
The female driver of that car was hospitalized.
Officials from the state Department of Fish and Game said detectives are
investigating whether the tiger played a role in the accidents, but said
they have not made a direct link yet.
The Hedengrans' arrests brought an end to a monthlong investigation as state
and federal authorities tried to determine who owned the tiger and how it
escaped.
The tiger was fatally shot Feb. 23 when it was found roaming near a school
in Moorpark.
During the probe, the Hedengrans repeatedly denied owning the escaped tiger,
saying their 5-year-old male, named Tuffy, had died.
"Abby said that the male tiger had died 1 1/2 to two years before because
someone from [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] had poisoned it,"
U.S. Department of Agriculture Special Agent Manny Flores wrote in the
affidavit.
The Hedengrans, however, could not produce records or police reports related
to the tiger's death, and former neighbors told authorities they had seen
Tuffy as recently as January, according to the criminal complaint filed
against Abby Hedengran.
The Hedengrans originally held a permit to keep their animals in Temecula
but failed to notify federal and state authorities when they moved to
Moorpark in January, said Mike Wintemute, a spokesman for Fish and Game.
Authorities did not learn of the couple's move until Jan. 31 when an escaped
lynx was found 1/8 of a mile away from the couple's property on a neighbor's
front porch. Fish and Game wardens tranquilized the lynx and took it to a
state-run animal-holding center.
Authorities believe Tuffy had escaped at the same time the lynx did because
tiger tracks were photographed Jan. 31 near California 23 near Simi Valley
by researchers on a mountain lion tracking project.
About three days after the lynx was trapped, Abby Hedengran showed up to
claim the 90-pound cat, which triggered an inspection of the property he and
his wife rented in Moorpark, Wintemute said.
Authorities found three lions, two tigers, a snow leopard and 16 smaller
cats, including bobcats and lynx, in a barn or running free inside the
Hedengrans' mobile home. The animals were not in permanent cages, as
required by law, nor was the ramshackle barn structure up to code, Wintemute
said.
Authorities gave the couple 72 hours to find homes for the cats, which were
transferred to various sites in California and Nevada.
Most of the larger animals were sent to a sanctuary in Las Vegas.
On Feb. 15, a caretaker at Day Creek Ranch in Moorpark reported seeing a
"large cat" darting into the brush and called local animal control, which
alerted state officials.
The next day, Fish and Game investigators found tiger tracks just east of
California 23 near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library near Simi Valley.
Tracks also were found west of the highway and at a nursery in the
neighboring Santa Rosa Valley.
Finally, on Feb. 23, the tiger was spotted by Moorpark residents who woke up
to find the tiger pacing in their backyard.
Trackers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shot the tiger dead in a
steep ravine near a housing development and a city park, causing an uproar
among animal rights activists.
Investigators said they linked the Hedengrans to the tiger by comparing
pictures and videos seized from the couple with the dead cat.
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Tiger's trail
The tale of a Siberian tiger in Ventura County:
Late January: Gert "Abby" Hedengran and Roena "Emma" Hedengran take their
animals from a permitted facility in Temecula and move them, without
California Department of Fish and Game's knowledge, to Moorpark.
Feb. 5: After receiving complaints from neighbors, Fish and Game
investigates the Hedengran property in Moorpark and 22 exotic cats,
including three African lions and two tigers, are found on the site. Some of
the smaller animals are running free inside the house, others are in
makeshift cages.
Feb. 9: Fish and Game and Ventura County officials give the Hedengrans a
72-hour notice to remove the animals and take them to another permitted
facility.
Feb. 12: The animals are successfully moved to facilities in California and
Nevada.
Feb. 15: A caretaker at the Day Creek Ranch in Moorpark reports seeing a
"large cat" dart into the brush, and calls local animal control.
Feb. 16: Fish and Game is contacted late in the afternoon.
Fish and Game personnel find tracks east of California 23. A full-scale
search begins.
Feb. 18: A Moorpark woman says she called the local zoo to report seeing a
tiger the previous week and, she says, was told she was "crazy."
Feb. 19: Tracks found west of California 23 and are believed to be two or
three days old. Trackers confirm the animal crossed over the top of the
highway.
Feb. 20: Baron Bros. Nursery contacts Fish and Game, and reports having
photographed tracks at its Santa Rosa Valley facility on Feb. 8. A federal
tracker confirms the tracks are from the same animal.
Feb. 22: Researchers on a mountain lion tracking project are contacted. They
report that they found a very large track along the wildlife corridor under
California 23 on Jan. 31.
Feb. 23: The tiger is spotted by a Moorpark resident and killed by trackers.
Source: State Dept. of Fish & Game
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