Sadness and anger over the killing of Sheba the tiger trended on social media last week, but it also invoked the outrage of one of the country’s top animal sanctuaries in Dinokeng.
Television footage wrongly linked the establishment with the tragic events surrounding Sheba.
Christa Saayman, owner of Mystic Monkeys and Feathers Wildlife Park, which also accommodates a few tigers and other predators, is extremely upset that footage of her facility was displayed during a news broadcast while she had nothing to do with Sheba.
Since her establishment was erroneously depicted, Saayman said she had been inundated with calls from people who wanted to know from her what had happened. “It’s unacceptable that my zoo’s pictures were shown during the entire broadcast. This gives my establishment a bad name. People keep on phoning to ask whether it’s my tiger,” she told the Pretoria News.
Saayman said she expected a correction. “They (the media) were on the premises where the tiger had escaped. Why did they not use that footage? I gave no one permission to broadcast footage of my place.”
Saayman said to top it all, now SA Rugby Union’s director of rugby, Rassie Erasmus, was also being pulled into the story. The Rugby World Cup-winning coach has the same name as Sheba’s owner, and Twitter was abuzz with confusion as to whether the Springbok legend, in fact, owned the big cat, which he did not.
The country awoke this week to the sad news of the fatal shooting of the 8-year-old tiger after she escaped from her enclosure at a smallholding in Walkerville, south of Johannesburg..
A wide-scale operation tracking the feline grabbed local and international news headlines after the big cat attacked 37-year-old William Mokoena, landing him in hospital.
Sheba also mauled other animals, including dogs and a pig. In the end, she was euthanised by trackers.
Adding her voice to those outraged at how things turned out, Charmaine Joubert, an old hand at working with predators at Mystic Monkeys, said euthanising Sheba was unacceptable.
“They could have rather phoned me and I would have assisted them. I’ve worked for years with tigers and other predators. I go into their cages, and I interact with them. I know them so well by now that I know how they act towards people.
“That tiger would have never killed anyone. She only attacked a person because she felt threatened. She came out of her enclosure and she did not know what to do.” Joubert said there was no doubt that Sheba would have returned to her home on the smallholding in Walkerville.
“They should have just waited patiently, and they should have put food out for her.
“She would have returned because the predator always returns to where it has been raised and kept.” Joubert said if one was searching for an escaped predator, one must be sure to take the experts along – “first, the best trackers, and then ensure that a vet is on the team so the tiger can be darted”.
“They say in the media that they had no option but to euthanise her, but that is totally wrong to me.
“They made it clear that this was because there was no vet with them.
“It’s so unfair towards an animal which had no say in the matter,” Joubert said.
Pretoria News