Sammy
and Farah's Story
Two
Bengal tigers were loose in Long Grove, an affluent
suburb, just north of Chicago, Illinois. A cougar lay dying in his
cage. The owner was giving up. There were lots of exotics on the farm.
He called us. The animals had to be out by noon tomorrow. The tigers
had been re-captured and were safely back in their cages, at least
for the time being, though we had no idea where we could put them.
There were two tigers in the cage, the male, a rare endangered
Sumatran, the female a less endangered Bengal. They were
elderly, the male
being twenty-three and the female twenty-one. They had been together
for the last twenty years, first with Barnum and Bailey's circus,
where they performed until their hips were too weak for them
to stand erect
for all but the shortest periods of time. These two tigers had spent
their whole lives serving man. Now they were surplus, worth much
more dead than alive. Their names were Sammy
and Farah.
Sammy came jogging up and puffed at me. I leaned down towards
and a strong smell of infection hit me. Looking closer I saw
that he
kept
rubbing his tongue over the stub where his lower left fang used to
be. They had defanged him, surgically, in an effort to make him "safe".
If there ever was a perfect example of a cruel joke, this was it.
You don't make tigers safe. Amazingly enough, some people really
believe
you can, and of course, it's the animal that suffers from the human's
misconception.
There was food in the pen, but nothing they could eat. Bones, with
rotted meat on them, littered the pen. They had a single wooden pallet
in the corner, too small for both of them to huddle on at once, and
no way to get out of the elements. The rest of the pen was a concrete
slab, soaking wet and freezing in spots. It was cold, late October,
and both the pen, and the tigers, were soaking wet.
Dr Rudawski, of Fox Lake Animal Hospital, in Fox Lake Illinois, came
out the day after we brought them home and worked on Sammy's teeth.
He had to use a three quarter inch drill, to open the tooth stub
canal wide enough for drainage from the jaw bone infection to pass.
It was
one of the most horrible procedures I had ever seen, but Sammy felt
obviously better, almost immediately. We sat out with them. We
had all night vigils with blankets and coffee for us, and blankets
and red meat for the tigers. After another operation on his tooth,
Sammy was getting better. That next summer, they were like
kittens again, rolling in the grass, sunning themselves and playing
in the
water.
Sammy and Farah did fine for the next several years, then Farah started
going downhill. When Farah died, Jill, Corey, and Sammy were with
her. As she passed on, she seemed to want to take her old, tired
body with
her, rising as if to greet someone. Sammy roared to say good-by,
as did everyone else in the main barn. The roars were filled with
sadness
and pain, not at all like those we were used to hearing. As we lowered
Farah to her final resting place, Sammy roared a final farewell.
All the large cats joined in. One could feel the emotion in the air.
The
animals responding to the loss of Farah were neither dumb, nor ignorant.
They had acted with emotion, feeling, and honor.
Just after Sammy and Farah came to us, we started our sponsorship
and membership support program. To this day, even though we bounce
checks
from time to time, and wonder where next month's funds are coming
from, we have never turned away a needy animal. We will do our best
to continue
the promise we made to Sammy and Farah: "None of your brothers
and sisters will suffer the way you did, if we can prevent it."
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