Cat People By Annette Stark

Cat People
Siegfried & Roy tempted fate
By Annette Stark
It was an accident waiting to happen. At least, that's what they're saying now: The horrific mauling of Vegas magician Roy Horn by one of his own tigers at the Mirage Hotel & Casino two weeks ago was inevitable. And, despite intense efforts by Vegas powerbrokers to represent it otherwise, scientists and activists are also now saying that the question isn't why Roy Horn was attacked, but why it didn't happen sooner.
"It's an anomaly," insists Bernie Yuman, manager of Siegfried & Roy, the illusionist duo comprising Horn and his partner, Siegfried Fischbacher. In interviews, Yuman has been saying that this was the only incident onstage in 30 years and more than 30,000 shows. Over at the Mirage, spokesperson Alan Feldman agreed; the attack on Horn was the first in the history of that show.
That is, the first attack onstage. In 1985, Chuck Flannery was working on the grounds of the Siegfried & Roy estate when he was jumped by one of their backyard cats. In an attack almost identical to Horn's, the tiger took Flannery's neck in its powerful jaws and dragged him, causing injuries so severe that Flannery was paralyzed. He's been in a wheelchair for 18 years. Apparently, the tiger was being treated for kidney disease and eventually died of the ailment. Flannery told the Las Vegas Review Journal that he stayed friends with Siegfried and Roy, though he rarely sees them, and bears the animal no ill will. "He was playing," Flannery offered.
Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have now charged Siegfried & Roy with bribing U.S. Dept. of Agriculture officials (USDA)to overlook safety issues with tickets to their show. USDA officials have denied the charge.
Why had this story been buried? "Everybody knew about that," says Siegfried & Roy/Mirage spokesperson Dave Kirvin. "It happened a long time ago and wasn't on the stage." I called the Mirage directly, and specifically asked if people there knew about the accident. Feldman's office called back and confirmed it, saying only, "Yes, the Mirage knew."
Immediately after the mauling, Horn was rushed to University Medical Hospital in Las Vegas, where he was treated for massive blood loss and underwent two surgeries, including one to remove part of his skull and relieve swelling on his brain. He remains on the critical list, partially paralyzed on the left side.
The following morning, a dark cosmic joke: New York police officers climbed through the window of a Harlem apartment and retrieved a 650-pound tiger that was being kept as a house pet. The tipoff came when owner Antoine Yates showed up in a Philadelphia hospital and tried to pass off the tiger bites on his leg as an attack by his pit bull.
Suddenly, it was Tigergate. CNN and MSNBC replayed the Yates story about every half-hour throughout the next few days, showing a horrible NYPD photo of the neglected tiger, stuck in a space between the bathtub and the wall. The Yates episode shed light on an issue that animal-rights activists warn us is a national epidemic: The keeping of exotic animals as house pets in American basements and backyards. Currently, there are 15,000 tigers, mostly bred in captivity, residing with families, magicians, roadside-circus owners, and trainers. A distressing statistic, considering that there are only about 5,000 in the wild. According to authorities, there are more big cats in the backyards of Texas than exist in the jungles of Asia.
To anyone watching, it quickly became apparent that the existing laws forbidding this kind of pet were just not working. In California (as in New York City), strict legislation prevents the keeping of exotic pets by private citizens; those that end up here are often illegally transported across state lines, especially from our neighbor, Nevada.
So while wild tigers are among the world's most endangered animals, apparently we're overrun with them here. In the U.S., the sale of tigers and other exotic animals to be kept as pets, or for meat, fur, or medicinal uses, has resulted in what MSNBC and other news outlets reported as a multi-billion-dollar industry. Many of the transactions are illegal.
The outlook for privately owned big cats isn't good. Most will either end up euthanized or living out their lives in sanctuaries that are stretched thin by the crisis of providing homes for so many abandoned big cats. Exotic animals that have been raised by humans in captivity can never be returned to the wild.
The Vegas establishment immediately took to the airwaves in defense of both Horn and the tiger. Fischbacher and Yuman appeared on Larry King Live: "Montecore was trying to drag his friend Roy to safety," Yuman blabbered, an idea that was dismissed by experts who point out Montecore is a male tiger and would never even carry cubs in his mouth. Speaking to Diane Sawyer, Yuman said he believed that "Montecore saw something that was unusual, and Roy heroically, from my perception, got in front of him." This paved the way for Bellagio resort tycoon Steve Wynn, who appeared on TV to say witnesses saw Horn leading the tiger onto the stage when it became distracted and "fascinated" by a woman with a "big hairdo" seated in the front. That worked for me. The tiger read Vogue.
It would have been nice to view the videotape of the performance, which Wynn insists shows four team members rushing onstage to rescue Horn. This account differs sharply from details provided by the original witnesses - who went on national TV and said the tiger dragged him offstage without intervention. The Associated Press reported that Horn was rescued only by an employee with a fire extinguisher.
But it wasn't surprising that Yuman would call panicked press conferences, grasping at any reasonable explanation for the attack. After all, he's still got the Siegfried & Roy DreamWorks cartoon in the works. Also, Yuman has just set up shop in Beverly Hills, with the idea of acquiring more clients. That one of his only two major talents is currently out of commission (he also now handles Muhammad Ali) doesn't leave Yuman much of a power base.
Last May, I was assigned a magazine profile on Yuman. Our interviews went on for days, but my initial reaction to him stuck fast: To him, being the manager of Siegfried & Roy was the most glamorous job in world. Living in a closed community like Vegas will do that to a person. At lunch, he gushed, "Look at this! I have my own table at Spago." It was a Spago in a shopping mall, next to the Caesar's Palace slot machines. Other than one woman who kept getting up to gamble, we were the only customers.
Yuman was nervous about being interviewed, which I figured was partly over the extremely unflattering Siegfried & Roy profile that had appeared in Vanity Fair. The duo has been on Vegas stages for two decades, and usually enjoys glorious spin. (Yuman counts Mirage executive Bobby Baldwin and Las Vegas Sun owner Brian Greenspun among his best friends.) I waited in his office for hours while he met with Robin Leach. "That's why I like working here," the receptionist said. "You never know who will come in."
Occasionally, Yuman poked his head out the door, inquiring whether his staff had shown me "the walls." But the walls were easy enough to find on my own: Photographs of Yuman with his magicians and nearly every celebrity you could imagine were plastered everywhere. In addition to the Hollywood glitterati, Bill and Hillary Clinton were represented in several pictures, as was Laura Bush.
"Look at that one," Yuman said. "That's Tom Cruise. And who is that?"
"Michael Jackson?" I guessed.
Yuman was delighted. The other obsession, besides the walls, was the Siegfried & Roy marquee. He drove me down the Strip in his black 'Vette ("Look at me! I have a 'Vette!") and insisted I watch the garish sign disappear in the rearview mirror. "It's the largest freestanding marquee in the world," he exclaimed. Finally, there were the terms I was to use when writing about Siegfried & Roy. The show was to be called a "spectacle," or a "performance," but never an "act." The men aren't "magicians," they're "illusionists."
As for the tigers? "They won't hurt you," he said. "They're trained." He offered that I could visit the compound to see for myself. It was an opinion shared by his staff. One person asked if I planned to meet the tigers. When I said I was frightened, she also assured me that the tigers were "perfectly safe." I don't know. Maybe they meant well.
~ Scenes From a Maul ~
PETA points the finger at Siegfried & Roy. "There was never any doubt that they contributed significantly to this crisis of private ownership in this country," says Lisa Wathne, a captive exotic animal specialist for PETA. "When you are standing on a Vegas stage with a baby tiger or a white tiger and the lights are flashing, the audience is applauding, it influences people to have them as pets. They see those animals, who are so striking, especially when they are cubs, and want them."
Within two days of Horn's attack, PETA vice president Dan Mathews faxed a letter to his hospital room. While he wished the magician a full recovery, the message was unsympathetic. Mathews suggested that "pounding music and a screaming audience is not the natural habitat for exotic animals," and the tiger "lashed out against a captor who was beating him with a microphone because he wouldn't do a trick."
The following Saturday, PETA rallied outside the Mirage to urge Siegfried & Roy to retire their tigers and build a sanctuary with the millions these animals helped them earn. Feldman then issued a statement for the Mirage, thanking the animal activists who have acknowledged the duo's contribution to animal preservation. "Their role in educating and encouraging the public to take a similarly active role in conservation has been the hallmark of their lives," Feldman said.
You could have been watching Baghdad Bob. The enemy - the biggest animal-rights organization in the country - was planted solidly outside the door, and Feldman was doing his best to ignore it. Furthermore, the release relied heavily on the same information that has been spoon-fed to the public for years, which is that Siegfried & Roy's conservation efforts saved the endangered white tiger from extinction.
Unfortunately, this is a fallacy. There is no such species or subspecies as the white tiger. Experts explain it's a genetic abnormality, an aberrant form of the orange Bengal tiger ´´ subspecies possessing few of the traits that would allow it to survive in the wild. Think about it. They're white. That alone would guarantee they'd be killed. Not coincidentally, white tigers are rarely seen in nature. White tigers are often mistakenly called Siberian tigers, which is a subspecies but is not white. White tigers are prized by breeders for their fur, their pale blue eyes and pink noses, which is caused by the double recessive mutant genes. Only two aberrant-colored white tigers can produce another white tiger.
Currently, of the estimated 150 white tigers in existence, 30 are in American zoos, far more are used for circus road shows, and the rest - 63 of them, according to Fischbacher - are divided among the stage at the Mirage, the Secret Garden of Siegfried & Roy, a glass enclosure at the Mirage hotel, and Horn's backyard. All white tigers are the result of aggressive inbreeding, sometimes by wannabe performers, imitators of Horn. If you ask any number of scientists and conservationists, they'll say they'd like it stopped.
According to the Guadalajara Reporter, the tiger that attacked Horn was purchased at the Guadalajara Zoo. Horn took Montecore from his mother, Shiva, when the cub was five days old. Zookeeper Francisco Rodriguez revealed that he had sold Siegfried & Roy four tigers since 1995 and wouldn't hesitate to sell them more.
"Siegfried & Roy try to legitimize their casino act by touting their white-tiger breeding program, but in fact the tigers are produced solely for entertainment and profit," says PETA's Wathne.
"Therefore, when Siegfried & Roy claim that they are saving these animals from extinction, they are being completely disingenuous," she adds. "All the white cats right now live exclusively in captivity and are extensively inbred. They have to be inbred because of the gene combinations necessary to produce a white tiger."
The American Zoo and Aquarium Association takes the same position. "We breed tigers for genetic diversity and are against breeding to create white tigers or lions," says Brandie Smith, a geneticist by trade and assistant director of conservation and science for the AZA. "You have to inbreed them because there are so few, and, in general, inbreeding reduces an animal's fitness. So, no, we don't see breeding white tigers as conservation.
"It would be different if they took all their profits and gave them to conservation in the wild," she stresses. "Because the only way to contribute to conservation is with money. Breeding just to breed is not conservation. Especially if you are breeding a genetic rarity."
So Horn created 70 mutants and then stepped back to admire his work. Otherwise, how do you explain it, in light of the fact that the AZA does not include the breeding of white tigers in its Species Survival Plan? Worse, he accepted international recognition for creating this master race of white beauties. On Bernie Yuman's office walls are photos of the duo with presidents and dignitaries. Were these animals so worth gawking at that the genetic issues became utterly beside the point? As Wathne points out, there is the risk of serious congenital defects with Horn's mutants. Geneticists have noted that aggressive inbreeding to produce the aberrant color variation known as the white tiger results in animals that give birth to smaller litter sizes, die sooner, and need more medical attention.
I assured Siegfried & Roy spokesperson Dave Kirvin I would include any rebuttal he had to support the duo's position as conservationists. Kirvin said he would check and see what he could provide, but did not call back.
"Siegfried & Roy's ability to convince the public that they have helped to save the white tiger from extinction has been their best trick yet," Wathne concludes.
~ Big Cats Don't Cry ~
The list of attacks by big cats in captivity is extensive. It includes maulings of children by family-kept tigers and numerous attacks on circus trainers. Bearcat Hollow, the nonprofit sanctuary in Racine, Minnesota, which illegally sold Antoine Yates his tiger, had an accident several years ago, wherein a tiger bit a child during one of its tours. One witness at the Siegfried & Roy show said that the tiger was so close she could almost pet it. (The USDA is currently investigating safety conditions that were in place to protect the workers and audience at the Mirage.)
As we wait for the results of the USDA investigation, we are still stuck with the legacy of Siegfried & Roy - a national epidemic of private big-cat ownership. Even Horn's supporters are pressing for stricter controls. Martine Collette, who runs the Wildlife Way Station in Tujunga, California, says that "while they weren't wrong, they did encourage it," and is firmly against private ownership. Her sanctuary runs entirely on private donations and provides homes to more than 600 otherwise homeless animals (including 150 big cats). "In the worst-case scenario," Collette says, "the owners declaw them and pull their teeth."
Mostly, Collette blames the lack of strict federal legislation. "I absolutely do not believe in breeding these animals for the private market and have always felt that we needed federal regulations more than state-by-state laws, because that's where the loophole is. And while the USDA governs all facilities that license animals for exhibit, they have no jurisdiction over private people. So to fix this, owners have to be subject to federal inspections."
Exotic-animal owners point out that they support legal ownership, as well, and condemn Antoine Yates for keeping his tiger in a New York apartment. But they say the federal government has no right to regulate the kinds of pets they keep in their own backyards, especially if the animals are well cared for. If they are willing to incur the risk for the pleasure of owning a big cat, they argue, it's none of the government's business. They also point out that there simply isn't enough room in the sanctuaries, and some, like Bearcat Hollow, aren't operating in the best interest of the cats, using exotic animals as a commodity and selling to owners without running background checks.
"Siegfried & Roy used their tigers as a commodity," Collette offers. "Is this a good thing? There are a lot of arguments. Have they promoted the welfare of animals? I feel they did. A lot of people felt the magic of that show.
"I don't like animals tied up in chains or cages," she adds. "On the other hand, with the vanishing wilderness, it's better to have them in captivity than not to have them at all."
Actress and renowned conservationist Tippi Hedren is a fan, too. She says, "The show was magnificent, and I'm not for fly-by-night animal acts. I've been working on a bill to stop it. But the world is not black and white, and the fact that it took 35 years for this to happen to Roy is a tribute to him."
Hedren founded and runs the Roar Foundation and the Shambala Preserve, a sanctuary located 40 miles northeast of Los Angeles at the edge of the Mojave Desert. Described as a "haven for endangered exotic big cats," Shambala currently provides homes for almost 70 exotic animals.
Hedren became involved with wild animals in 1969 while doing a film, Satan's Harvest, in Africa. She met a "mellow" lion and fell in love with big cats. "As beautiful as they are, they have a sense of humor, inferiority problems, and can harm you in a split second," she warns. "That is why we have practically no contact with the animals at Shambala. Look at that movie. Every time I watch it, I thank God that none of us were killed. We were all hurt, every one of us. Our DP [director of photography] was hurt badly, and so was one of our assistant directors. When tigers are in an attack mode, there's nothing you can do to stop it." Regarding big cats on Vegas stages, Hedren says, "I certainly cannot condone putting people at risk."
~ Joe vs. the Republic ~
For two decades, Siegfried & Roy represented private ownership of big cats better than anyone. If there was a case to be made for the entertainment value of exotic pets, they made it on that glitzy stage. Immediately after Horn's accident, a lot of us - including me - thought, well, there's the other side to that story.
In the interest of fairness, I looked for someone who could argue otherwise. And I looked hard, too, because many private owners I spoke with said things that were so easy to refute. Finally, I found Joe Krathwohl, who, besides performing with animals, runs a business renting exotic birds and tigers in Vegas.
A native of Santa Clara, California, Krathwohl started training birds when he was 10. By 15, he had a show at Marriott's Great America and also at various zoos. "Wherever I was, I tried to learn about all the animals," he says. "Snakes, apes, tigers, lions, you name it. I was just absorbing everything."
Eventually he got hired at the Tropicana Hotel and relocated to Vegas, where he started his company Birds and Beasts, Inc. Krathwohl also became friends with Siegfried & Roy. "They sold me a rare pair of exotic eagles in 1990," he says. "I started going there to help with their birds, and through them I began learning exactly how to operate a bird company, but with tigers. It's the same, just a higher level of animal."
Krathwohl got his first baby tigers from a zoo in the Midwest. "They didn't look that healthy, and the zoo said they didn't think they would make it. So I took care of them, fed and exercised them well, and now, five years later, I still have these beautiful white tigers."
To those who would like to see all private ownership stopped, Krathwohl responds: "There are 65 Hollywood trainers within an hour's drive of L.A. Nobody hears about them because they are USDA licensed and meet all safety standards. Also, if someone is licensed, I really don't care if they call it their pet or not. Humans have a right to share their life with any pet they want."
Krathwohl compares the situation to gun control. "I have a handgun. It's registered. And, amazingly, I haven't done any drive-by shooting. Those are people operating outside the system. The laws are already there, and they are phenomenally black and white. There are five walls between my tigers and you. So I shouldn't be held accountable because there was a tiger in some idiot's Manhattan apartment."
Horn's accident, he says, will only affect the industry if people who know nothing are allowed into the debate. In the event that animal-rights groups succeed in banning the ownership of exotic animals, Krathwohl claims the owners are prepared to sue.
"I'm assuming PETA would be high on the list, because they're trying to get all the tigers at the Mirage released," he says, adding, "People are always trying to infringe on the rights of others. I'm very conservative, very Republican, and I feel you should be able to do what you want as long as you follow the law. I want to work with tigers and understand the danger. So, therefore, my rights should be solid. I don't want those people deciding what I can do, any more than they would want me deciding what car they can drive."
The debate might not get that far. Vegas has undergone so many changes recently - shifting away from G-rated family shows like Siegfried & Roy in favor of sex-oriented themes. Even Treasure Island ditched the family fun. It replaced its famous pirate show, Battle of Buchaneer Bay, with Sirens of Treasure Island, featuring 20 scantily-clad women. Will there even be an audience much longer for campy magicians with tigers in Sin City? Maybe not. Like the old mob-run casinos, the big brothels, and unlimited bets, wild-animal acts might simply fade into the blinding open desert. But it seems that backyards will be dangerous for a long time to come.
Published: 10/23/2003