Stoned and Drunk and Messing with Tigers

I read the headline "Mauling Victim Taunted Tiger" and my first response was to check it off to one weird headline in the newspaper.

But then I read it because the picture of the victim made me realize he was very young. Not much older than my kids.

Young men at the San Francisco zoo on Christmas day, mauled, one killed by a tiger they were taunting.

I could only respond from my place in the world as a mother.

Did I have to tell you NOT to do that? What about getting high, drinking and driving was not enough of a blatant disrespect for rules? You had to go and taunt a tiger?

I'm not trying to be funny. It's a nightmare to me as a parent. What do I have to say, what have I missed and my god, when does common sense kick in?

I'm horrified to imagine one of my kids could do something so dangerous. And not have a clue how dangerous it was. Their friend is dead. The tiger is dead. The EMT's and Police that came were put at risk not to mention the countless people who witnessed the gruesome event.

It makes me scared. Scared as a parent of three boys. What do I have to say to them? What kind of culture continues to encourage the level of risk taking seen in these young men, continually, all over the country?

The blame, as it is being bantered across many blogs, misses the mark. The victims, regardless of their behavior, were still attacked by a wild animal. Stupid, irresponsible, no question. A wild animal did what it is meant to do. I'm not sure how a zoo could be prepared for someone standing on a railing, drunk, high and creating a kind of disturbance that would trigger a wild animal's instincts.

I'm stuck on the drinking, getting high and driving. The blood alcohol levels above legal limits. Pot in the car.

And the lying. Their friend was dead and they lied about what happened.

I know there is a dramatic rise in violence and outwardly destructive behavior in girls, and it's not all about gender roles, but it is about gender roles. What it means to be a "man."

Where does it start? Showing off, playing among friends, who can be bolder, crazier, sillier? For girls does it become a contest of who can get away with the most makeup, the shortest skirt while boys end up taking more physical risks?

I don't understand why anyone would stand on a railing of a tiger enclosure and shout.

When does the bravado become uncool? When someone is dead?

I hope someone has the answer because as a mother, I can only ask why?

Comments

[sparkandy]

I went through hell raising my son. He wanted desperately to be 'cool', so he started hanging out with kids who burgled houses. We tried everything, from tough love to sending him to a series of boys' homes. Nothing worked. By the time he was 19 he was in prison for burglary of a pawn shop. When he got out, he made a few half ass efforts to straighten up, then went to live with his father. He got caught delivering drugs for Daddy, and went to jail for a year, with six years probation. That was MY worst nightmare, and I lived it for a very long time. There's no pain as great as a child gone wrong.
He got out of jail in August and came to live with me. Now all he wants to do is work, save money, buy a truck and some land, fish on weekends, eventually open his own auto repair shop somewhere in the sticks, and be a volunteer fire fighter. There WAS a light at the end of the tunnel. I thank God every day that we all survived long enough to see this day.

[Guitarsandmore]

"cool" is just a term used to validate and encourage certain types of behavior. As John Edwards says we must give youth something to be patriotic about besides war. And I say we must also validate healthy behavior instead of self destructive behavior. We must do this in a way that is complementary and not condescending and preachy.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Big kitty+stupid teenagers=bipedal appetizers, and one rare animal destroyed. There should be
a parental ass-beating, and then an ass-beating
carried out BY the parents. But, in these enlightened times, the kids will probably get
some sort of counseling, and a slap on the wrist...

[moderationsmuse]

Re: When does the bravado become uncool?

Why does anything have to be cool? Somehow the idea of hipness has become the essential thing. I don't know exactly when this happened. Anybody know? I haven't always been paying attention. But now one hears this word, presumed to mean something to adolescents, used by grey haired types who ought to have formed more discriminating means of commentary.
While I do not remember what my parents or other adults babbled to me in my infancy, I notice that parents (and teachers) seem universally to use (in this country anyway) the epithet "cool" as their unique form of praise, and the pattern begins before the kid can talk. One might reasonably wonder why little "Johnny" needs to be indoctrinated into the identification of the "cool" from his (or her) earliest moments of awareness. Why??
For some adults, a rich English vocabulary of evocative words is reduced to nearly this one syllable by which one "emotes" (?) one's only permissible comment, one which must be applied to nearly any situation: "cool."
It annoys me to no end, and I say this as a lifelong fan of Miles Davis.
Well, there has to be a reason why we use this term as routinely as Osama bin Laden says "Allāhu Akbar." Evidently it is our religion. Well, somebody's, not mine.
Do not indoctrinate your children into the idea that they must be "cool." Rather encourage them to be as "uncool" as they please. Urge them to cultivate "uncoolness" by being all the myriad things that people used to be prior to the invention of "cool."
Better still, when they are on the threshold of adulthood, encourage them to take the next step. Encourage them to grow up.

[TheWesternBreed]

The tiger had every reason to believe that he was only dealing with three chimps.

[Rockwell]

Sorry Sara, but young men (and woman) will do stupid things despite the best efforts of their parents. Death is an abstract concept when you are young. Consequences happen to other people.

And unfortunately for many young people, for thousands of years, their last thought has been "oh shit, that was stupid".

[LiberalEastTexan]

>>>When does the bravado become uncool? When someone is dead?

Bravado never becomes uncool - case in point, the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.

[Guitarsandmore]

Death is the thief in the night that robs us of the people we love too soon before we are done enjoying their company. While I was lost in my own daydream death crept into your bedroom, found you embracing the wine and the pills, and stole your life away forever. The voice of joy and laughter you gave to hundreds has gone silent and left us all aching inside for more. The world has become darker and emptier and colder and older and lonelier. Death has broken me all the way down to tears and pain and sobs. I love you and I miss you, young cousin.

- for Kristina Ross 1980-2007

[stevesrant]

Sara - The zoo is at fault here (tigers are one of the few maneaters in the animal world and don't need to be taunted to attack} for not securing this enclosure to the maximum. But the other active ingredient is the same as in many other acts of teenage stupidity: alcohol, the second most destructive drug in the world after tobacco. But we refuse to label it for what it is, a drug, legal, but still a drug. Every time I hear someone say drugs and alcohol I want to correct them and say, 'you mean drugs, including alcohol". Our son is 16 and we have tried to teach him that, while all drugs have their dangers and are generally best left alone, some are way more dangerous than others, and legality is not a good indicator of this. Tobacco (to which I was addicted for 30 years) is as addictive as heroin and will kill you eventually. Alcohol is particularly dangerous for teenagers because it is so pervasive in our adult world (and in most human cultures generally), but is not identified as the potent drug it is. You seperate 'drinking' and 'getting high' as if they were different things. Nobody drinks for the taste - we drink to get high. And when we get high, we should stay home.

[CarolEM]

i wonder if you go back 100 years 500, 1000... if boys/men were really any different then they are now. Some young people have more common sense or more likely it's a more normal sense of fear and self preservation then others. Everyone has seen pictures of families dads, moms and kids feeding bear on the side of the road in yellowstone national park. We all do stupid things but some of us just are out right ignorant. To tell you the truth i wish these kids were one of the lucky ones and "got away with it". So they could grow up and get perspective on the stupid crap they did. But they aren't lucky like so many of us, we may not have taughted bears but many of us got away scott free with stuff we have long put out of our minds. Thank God.
Like it or not we are all responsible for our own actions including teenages...

[moderationsmuse]

There was an old lion in the Afghanistan zoo that was killed as somebody's mis-guided "political" act. I am not sure why the recent US tiger mauling death of the teenager has captured so much attention except for its being unusual. Teenagers die in significant numbers behind the wheel annually ever since the advent of the automobile, a fact that bio-fuels or other "green" policies will not mitigate. Before the automobile, testosterone took its toll in other ways.
I am not willing to indite the whole society, though I think Modern America's love affair with adolescence sends unfortunate signals to the more gullible among young males.
It is possible for teenage males to begin assuming something like real manhood, though most people define manhood in sexual terms (sadly).
Redefine manhood as responsibility and, who knows, we might even find that "abstinence only" works rather more than now. Such a change would benefit young women as much as young men, taking the sexual pressure off young women of defining their self-esteem in sexual terms.
We don't appeal strongly enough to the idealism of the young. Their idealism is by nature strong, but the fashionable factoids and truisms undermine it at every turn. And then, eventually, it's rather too late.

[Halsey]

Of course getting mauled to death was NOT an appropriate punishment for taunting a caged animal..but what sick part of these kids brains led them to cruelty..yes..teenagers take chances...drive to fast...experiement with drugs, jump off cliffs..but none of these youthful (albiet stupid and dangerous) acts involved cruelty to animals. I am sorry,but somewhere the parents failed to instill respect in these boys...again, they don't deserve to bury their young due to this act...
For me. I hate zoos..can't stand seeing the eyes of caged animals...and won't give my money to them...

[batguano]

A total lack of RESPECT for the lives of others...whether animal or human...in this tragic case it made the ultimate difference; death for two (man and tiger) and mauling for others.

In the case of the Bush/Neocon Regimes lack of respect for much smaller and less able (or willing) to respond (so far) caged wage-slaves and other victims who have not apparently been sufficiently taunted by the entirely inhumane Bush rule (except the rich or connected) to rightfully maule and hold them to account. War for profit, crony support for Israeli occupation killing, theft and destruction, incompetence and contempt for the people of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, tax cuts for the super-rich while the rest of us make up the local shortfall, mine and worker safety, consumer safety, etc, etc; the list of taunting and lack of respect for the caged exhibits of our nation and elsewhere in the world is endless.

The three idiots who showed contempt for the sad life the Tiger experienced were tragically brought to account for their failure to RESPECT another creature. I would that the ENTIRE Bush/Neocon/PNAC/AEI cabal of criminal taunters who have poked sticks through the bars for so long be brought up short and be forced to pay for their endless lack of respect, contempt, lies, treason and crimes against humanity!

[Stagmom]

Kids have always taken risks - remember "Stand by Me" the movie with the kids on the train tracks? They aren't hard wired to understand danger to themselves as teens. But today the kids watch "Jackass" which takes risk to the super extreme level. Maybe they were emulating that? They are surrounded with fake death in video games - where they get the thrill of the kill but none of the risk. Add being stoned and taunting the Tiger was just another game. Except it was live. The death games are a far cry from Pong, Pac Man and Super Mario Brothers. I don't blame the movies or the games - but I do think they play into what the kids think is normal. Lord, I am getting old, aren't I? :) I think the kids are candidates for the Darwin awards - people who die by doing very stupid things.

Sara, a mother does worry. And wonder. I agree.

KIM

[PookyShoehorn]

Thank you for giving us this perspective, Sara. As you know, this story has a lot of people enraged about lawsuits and legal liability. But what everyone seems to forget is that there is a mother and father who are grieving right now for their son, and asking the same questions you pose.