Keeping up with the Camilleris
How do I get off this damned rock?
It was bound to happen. As the pet stakes rose ever higher, with Huskies and chimps and boa constrictors and squirrels for the children to pull around in their toy cars, somebody was going to come along and really push at those pet boundaries.
It’s not so much a case of keeping up with the Camilleris as aspiring and achieving so far beyond them that they can never hope to keep up with you. Eat my pet dust, sir. You’ve got an Alaskan sledge-dog on your roof. I’ve got a Bengal tiger on mine.
Bengal tigers have always been, as far back in human history as I can rummage, the greatest animal status symbol of them all, several steps higher than a lion. They have never been pets in the proper sense of the word, because you can’t really bond with a tiger nor have it run around the living-room (but then dogs don’t run around the living-room in Malta, either).
Tigers were kept as symbols of power and wealth: power because a tiger will kill anyone who enters its territory and so required a large number of dispensable slaves to control it; and wealth because until the late 20th century, only the comfortably-off could afford to eat meat, and only the spectacularly rich could throw whole cows to the resident tiger – or slaves, depending on which happened to be cheaper and more available at the time.
Tigers were kept by princes and emperors. They were not kept by otherwise ordinary people with rather a lot of money, slaves and cattle to expend. That’s because, in less democratic times than ours, you acquired one of the ultimate symbols of power and prestige at your peril. It could have been taken as a direct challenge and an affront to those with real power.
The Bengal tiger cub which was found by investigating officers on a Mosta rooftop, fed chickens and provided with an air-conditioned rest area, is little more than a contemporary version of this age-old theme. It is extraordinary that over the course of a couple of thousand years, so much of human behaviour has changed but certain peculiarities have not.
A Bengal tiger remains a huge status symbol, perhaps more so now that the species is threatened with extinction and trade in the creatures is heavily policed than back in the days when the whole of North Africa and the Syro-Palestine region were systematically stripped of their big cats and elephants to feed the amphitheatres of the Roman world.
The difficulty is that owning a Bengal tiger today is like owning that other top status symbol, one of Picasso’s major works. You’ve got to lock it up, show it to nobody, and it’s best to let no one know you have it – just in case the wrong people come calling.
And that sets one up in a bit of a conundrum, because the whole point of status symbols is that as many other people as possible get to know about them and register your status accordingly. A secret status symbol might seem like a contradiction in itself, but it isn’t quite. If there were not people about who derive immense satisfaction and a thrilling power-kick from owning something really quite extraordinary, but for their eyes only, then there would be no market in master paintings and ancient wonders stolen to commission.
Officers of the Animal Welfare Department, the police, and the environment and planning authority raided the Mosta premises after receiving reports that a tiger-cub was running around on the roof. This unprecedented situation seems to have left the lot of them at a loss. Leaving the tiger where it is, they retreated to investigate whether all its papers are in order and that it does not have illegal status under the draconian rules of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, to which Malta is a signatory.
If the tiger’s papers are fine – but they are unlikely to be, because importing a Bengal tiger by the proper channels would have entailed some negotiation with the Customs Department, at least – then there is nothing that the police and the rest of those officials can do. You need a licence to keep a television, but you don’t need a licence to keep a tiger, or a lethal cobra.
Whether a law (or for that matter, the absence of one) is a sensible thing can be seen by testing it to its limits. There is no law to prevent us keeping tigers or venomous snakes at home, without a licence and in conditions that are not strictly regulated and monitored. One person keeps a tiger on a roof – fine. Ten people keep cobras in tanks in their garages – fine.
But if more and more people bring in tigers, lions and cobras, then suddenly it’s not fine. It becomes a serious problem. I would say that it is a problem already, because there is no way a Bengal tiger, a huge animal which needs plenty of prowling territory, can be looked after properly on a Mosta rooftop by somebody who isn’t trained to look after tigers.
The smaller the area in which this animal is kept, the more often it is going to have to be cleaned. Somebody is going to have to do that cleaning, and we have a rather nasty accident waiting to happen. There was a comment beneath the news story on the internet that tigers are like cats, and that if they are handled by human beings from birth they will become tame, as cats do.
Tigers are nothing like cats. It is precisely this kind of mixture of presumption and ignorance that would have led the owner, without slaves, a large estate or a herd of cattle to keep it fed, to think that keeping a Bengal tiger on a Mosta roof would be a doddle – just a little bit more complicated than the Camilleris and their Husky.
Cats are domesticated; Bengal tigers are not. No matter how much they are handled from birth, how they are trained to do their master’s bidding by jumping through hoops of fire and holding out paws like dogs, they remain Bengal tigers. When they feel like killing somebody who is getting on their nerves, they will. They will kill even their trainers – perhaps especially their trainers, their guards, and their keepers in zoos.
Keeping a Bengal tiger is an act of pure insanity by those who are not in a position to buy a few new slaves at the next market when the tiger has eaten last month’s purchases.
As a liberal, I would say let this man keep his tiger if he wishes to have his passion consume him. We don’t stop people climbing Everest because they might die. But as somebody who has had from childhood a horror of cages and the imprisonment of non-domesticated animals, I say that this tiger must be saved from the terrible fate of a life spent on a small Mosta rooftop, and delivered to expert care because it cannot be released into the wild at this stage.
And as somebody who is fiercely averse to irrational thinking, I say that there’s something very wrong somewhere when the old Miracle dinghy lying neglected in our garden is licensed and registered, the car parked under the tree is too, but the tigers leaping over it and chewing on the random limbs of trespassers don’t have to be.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvN6oQDqzdk
Now for a tiger, multiply that by a million.
http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/wildlife_news/siegfried_roy_incident_underscores_the_dangers_of_exotic_pets.html
and THAT says it all !
The big question remains – how did the cub get into Malta in the first place?
An act of pure nouveau-riche hamallagni, more like.
Adrian Borg – Same way as irregular immigrants maybe!
So the tiger wanted to avoid oppression, intended to flee to Europe and ended up in Malta?
Isn’t that called a double whammy?
No
The question to ask is what will become of these exotic pets when their owners tire of them or realize that they are unmanageable? I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to assume that some owners may be tempted to do what many do when they tire of their dogs or cats and release them in the wild. Have a look at the article below about Burmese pythons released into the Florida Everglades when they grew to large for their owners to handle:
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/…/0603_040603_invasivespecies.html
India is 10,000 times bigger than Malta if one had to compare the surface area of both countries (3,287,263 v 316). With 1,400 Bengal tigers in India and one (known) in Malta, this means that Malta has eight times more Bengal tigers per sq km than India. We also have more than our fair share of know-alls, ego maniacs and paedophile priests, but the lack of official figures hinders me from providing more proof on these achievements, if proof is in fact necessary.
I like that thought… Malta may have one of the densest tiger populations in the world then. India has 0.43 tigers per thousand km2 and Malta has 3.16. Makes me proud.
Has anyone ever heard of an IQ test on the island? Think we have a ‘genius’ here. Ineffingcredible.
You can train a tiger but you will never tame it.
I also find it ridiculous that species that could survive in our (little) countryside like scorpions, spiders and snakes, venomous or not are allowed to be kept.
Snakes, for example are the Houdinis of the animal kingdom (actually they would put Houdini to shame). It was reported that Mater Dei Hospital does NOT stock anti-venom; besides there is no universal anti-venom, you have to know which snake it is, etc.
Even a non venomous species could wreak havoc on the Maltese habitat. As to keeping any animal permanently on the roof .. disgraceful.
Why must we Maltese be so bloody difficult?
As usual, we always try to make out that the Maltese are worse than anybody else.
This idiot deserves all that has been said about him – but let’s not try and make it seem as if this only happens here – it happens everywhere.
Rome, in particular, is notorious for the vast number of large and dangerous pets kept privately and the police (or carabinieri or whatever) are regularly called out to round them up when they escape (or are abandoned)
By the way, I witnessed a tiger mauling a man first hand from a few feet away. I was 12, so it was in 1987. It was at a circus in Malta and we were in the front row. The tiger escaped as they were dismantling the cage and jumped on the man literally five feet away from me.
Ray Azzopardi was the ringmaster and I must admit, he handled himself pretty well trying to keep the screaming crowd in check.
I know it sounds really terrible today, but as a boy I thought it was really cool that I got to see a live tiger attack and I fought my dad tooth and nail as he dragged me away. Needless to say I was the boy of the week at school.
Have you been reading “The Goalkeeper’s Revenge and other stories”?
Nope, this is true, I can’t remember the exact date but it really happened. The chap who was mauled needed surgery but did not die, luckily. Ask Ray Azzopardi! Anyway, believe, don’t believe – whatever!
By the way, that was indeed a great book!
Indeed. A book about growing up in the “Just William” way.
I’m surprised the racists didn’t blame the illegal immigrants for bringing it in on one of their boats.
What a good article. This situation is so Hyacinth Bucketesque. Certainly beats having a house with a swimming pool, a sauna, and room for a pony.
A decade and a half ago I met someone who told me that some years previously he had a tiger as a pet. He had bought it as a cub (or slightly older) from a visiting circus. According to this chap, after some time he had to trim the tiger’s claws (“naqtgħalha d-dwiefer”), and was advised to sedate the animal with tranquillisers. Unfortunately he overdid it with the Valium, and the poor beast slept never to rise again.
I am eager for January to arrive. Then we can see the pet tiger being taken for the annual pet blessing. I hear that there are already bets on whether feathers, fur or something else would be ruffling the cat’s whiskers by the end of the ceremony.
Maybe the tiger’s owner was inspired by this story, though I doubt it ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QubDayYZ4wI
The ultimate inspirational story (albeit fictional) involving a Bengal tiger would be Life of Pi by Yann Martel, winner of the Booker Prize in 2002.
Las Vegas is in Mosta… and the Masters of the Impossible with their new show The Magic Begins at Home: http://www.siegfriedandroy.com/home/index.php
http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/asia/object_stories/Tippoo's_tiger/index.html
That was a touching documentary with such a bittersweet ending.
You need a licence to keep a television, but you don’t need a licence to keep a tiger, or a lethal cobra.
Or, to make the point more forcefully: you are required by law to have a licence to keep a chihuahua but not a tiger.
Why do you have a Miracle Dinghy lying neglected in the garden? Get your boys to patch it up and come down to B’Bugia Sailing club on a Wednesday afternoon or Saturday morning to do some sailing.
[Daphne – It’s a legacy from those days – St Paul’s Bay, though.]
The Camilleris should be ashamed of themselves for not being patriotic enough. If they really wanted to keep a tiger as a pet they should have at least gone for the Maltese tiger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_Tiger
Well, herbs if you read the article properly…the Camilleris do not have the tiger. They only have two Siberian huskys. Why don’t you try and find a Maltese born and bred tiger? Good luck with that. But before you start commenting on all this, why don’t you get your facts straight first?
I can imagine a tiger in Marsa, Hal-Far, Balzan, etc, but not in Mosta.
I wonder if the owner bought it a diamond-studded collar to take it out for a passigata? Insanity runs riot on this island. What baffles me is how the owner managed to get it through customs: did he tranquilise it and stuff in a suitcase?
A bit out of point, I know, but to read some inane comments, simply click on this link:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090904/local/foul-smell-of-gas-reported-across-malta
Yes, this has caused a number of the usual comments but even the authorities are to blame for not coming out clearly explaining that even if all of Enemalta’s gas containers suddenly sprouted a leak, it would not have caused this odour to spread over Malta (if anything only within some metres of the leak).
I believe that this is a prank by someone – mercaptan (or similar compunds) have a very strong odour and apart from being used as an indicator of the odourless gas, it is also used in industry and labs. So I would not be surprised if it was a prank by someone pouring some in the streets of the localities involved. Have you noticed that no reports came from Gozo?
Personally I don’t see what all the fuss is about. If the tiger is being kept in good conditions, then I say let it be. Tigers do NOT need vast tracts of land to roam around in, no animal does. If it is looked after properly, any animal can be kept in a zoo-like enclosure. The key word here is, of course, properly. I’d even argue that the tiger would be more comfortable (I hesitate to use the word ‘happy’, they’re not humans) here than in the wild in India, where it would likely be poached for its ‘medicinal properties’
Further reading: Life of Pi
Chris, have you ever heard about Chris the lion?
“In 1969, two friends, Ace Berg and John Rendall, purchased and adopted a lion. At the time, Christian was a 35only pound cub. He had been born in a zoo. The friends raised Christian in their London home. All three became great friends!
Within a year, Christian GREW TOO BIG (lol tajjeb ghal Mosta mela Chris), Rendall and Berg realized they couldn’t keep him much longer . The two decided to release Christian back ino the wild. Christian was realeased into a conservation system Africa.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHhnOcR843c
That should put things into perspective for you.
Also one needs to know that lions can eat humans, but they’re not famous for it like tigers are.
Lions are also social animals like us and are led by a pack leader, on the other hand tigers lead a solitary life , are extremely territorial and submit to nobody, because unlike a lion it has no natural instinct to obey a leader.
Despite all this good press about lions (regarding their loyalty and respect to leaders) they still remain extremely dangerous and I dare not think about how dangerous a naturally solitary tiger is.
This is also why cats are terribly hard to control (cats and tigers are very similar), they’re solitary, ruthless with their prey, highly terroritorial and have no leader.
If my (stray) cat was the size of a tiger I would have been a goner by now, what with all the scratches to the face and arm and there were times when the cat bit me for not giving it more food. (obviously a cat scratch is harmless, but compare its claw to a tiger claw and I’m pretty sure you’ll reach the same conclusion).
If I owned a tiger instead of a cat: I would be headless, armless and legless so if I were the Camilleris I’d take the tiger back to India and do a dry run with a stray cat. I’m sure they’d change their mind once the cat starts clawing on their shoes, scratching the furniture, climbing up the curtains and biting their owners shoes to give them more food.
Of course there always the case where a cat can just go mad and randomly tries to claw you to death for no reason (this happened to my dads friend).
What is the fuss about?
You’re assuming the guy wants to keep it as a pet, in his living room, which he does not. You also assume that he’s going to be feeding it in the same way you feed your cat.
My point is, if the guy keeps it in the same way it would be kept in a zoo, then there really should be no fuss at all.
Bhal dak li qallu: “My friend is ‘armless but I’m legless”.
Whatever next? I too wonder what will become of this poor animal once this fool tires of it.
For tigers bred in captivity I guess it wouldn’t really matter (to them) where they are kept as long as they are well looked after, to a certain extent. A tiger bred in a cage doesn’t know any better. If it had a choice it would rush off into the open.
Are we to believe that lions in a cage, at a circus or on a roof are better off because they are spared from being captured?
Animals of any species want freedom. To me freedom is the most valuable thing to give to any animal.
http://www.tigerlink.com/husbandry/husman7.htm
“Many times, given the opportunity, the tiger will go back to its cage.”
[Daphne – For roughly the same reason that some slaves refused emancipation and some women stay with men who beat them.]
That comparision gives them human characteristics they just don’t have. The joy human beings get from freedom is being able to go out and meet with their friends, buy whatever they want, enjoy whatever form of entertainment they desire, etc. Wild animals (especially solitary ones, not social ones) just don’t care about that. As long as their basic needs are fulfilled they will not be unhappy. They do not have aspirations and dreams as we do. In the wild, tigers need such massive territories simply because of how dispersed all their needs are. The river to drink from will be miles and miles away from where the next meal is, and that in turn will be miles and miles away from where shelter and rest is. In a zoo or similar enclosure, all their needs are concentrated within metres of each other, so such vast tracts of land are not necessary.
[Daphne – You’re wrong. Most mammals suffer from boredom and depression caused by confinement and lack of stimulation.]
No. Animals love routine, especially if their needs are fulfilled. It is precisely when their routine is disturbed that they become stressed, and dangerous. Introducing new animals, changing feeding times, changing day/night times (through use of artificial lights)… These are the things that stress animals, not stimulate them out of boredom. I’m not saying that all animals kept in captivity are happy. But if they are kept well, and up to the current standards of zoo science, then they will not be suffering.
I really do encourage reading Life of Pi; it’s quite an insightful book.
[Daphne – Somebody bought me a copy, but I was reluctant to pick it up. I can’t relate to novels that have no semblance to reality: talking animals, that kind of thing. It was fine when I was nine years old, but not any more.]
Yup, I thought it would be about talking animals too when I read the back, but turns out it had nothing of the sort. The boy ends up having to devise a means to survive on a life boat with a wild animal, and it’s an interesting story of survival and resourcefulness.
What you say is true, Chris. That the tiger could choose to go back to its cage. It is the only route it knows of. And again, as Daphne said in her bold letters (I would omit the word roughly): it’s only because the cage is the only safe living quarters it knows of, where it feels protected from being attacked. It is where it finds its food and water and maybe, the loving tone (very important) its keeper uses with it. About 48/50 years ago when we had sparrows and robins flying all over the island we used to capture them (it was legal then) and keep them in tiny cages – gabbjetti. I never had a robin returning to its cage, but the same robin (that had escaped) stayed in the garden where it was caught. I am also sure that had the same robin known how to get into its cage it would have done so. That is the only safe environment it knew of.
[Daphne – A cage isn’t a safe environment to a robin, but rather the opposite.]
I think we should act now to control wild life in Malta especially poisonous spiders and snakes. Such creatures can live in our climate except for the cold winter months, and even so, they might find refuge in an old building and live. Anti-venom is not available in Malta, and the nearest supply of cobra anti-venom is in Milan, so anyone bitten has no chance of survival. I think we should take stock of the situation and proceed with licensing such animals, and stocking of anti-venom.
If you think the tiger should not be kept in captivity on the grounds of it deserving freedom, then you either believe this to be true for all animals including cows, or you are a hypocrite.
The real reason why a tiger should not be kept in captivity in such a situation is obvious. Safety.
About 18 years ago my family and I were driving behind an Escort in Guardamangia with a full-grown tiger standing on the back seat.
My cats are very lovable but on various occasions, they have scratched me, they have nibbled me, they have clawed me, they have jumped on me – just imagine a tiger doing that.
No one can convince me that this man is qualified to look after tigers and a roof is certainly not the place tigers should be kept. I’ve never seen tigers in the wild but I’ve seen them in wildlife parks and they do wander about – definitely more than what is really available on the average roof.
Immaterial to all this – who is going to check that the security aspect is adequate and do we have vets with experience in treating wild animals? If dogs have to be kept in quarantine and microchipped, how on earth can a tiger be brought in to Malta apparently with ease?
Let’s be honest – who would feel safe knowing a tiger is living next door?
Have you not realised that this is just to give Mickey Mouse company? All this fuss about a tiger! I keep wondering what’s next for our pajjiz tal-Mickey Mouse. Maybe this is the start of a new way to promote Malta as a lost exotic animal destination something like Jurassic park? It’s already a “gungla”; we have many African people coming too, so the stage is set! Bring it on Tarzan Boy!
[Daphne – There are no tigers in Africa. It’s called a Bengal tiger because it’s native to….that part of India.]
I never said it came from Africa! Read …..
K Smith: The old B&W Tarzan films featured exotic animals like swans. Maybe that’s where you learned your geography?
The authorities have been very quiet on what is happening with “tigger” and what/why/how etc….
No magic bullet for the above, so far. Jungle Jim, maybe?
The cliche is that most people attribute anthropomorphic qualities to animals and many argue that giving them artificial housing (e.g. cages, zoos, parks, and other confinement) provides them with safety and comfort as opposed to having to face ‘dangers’ in the wild. This is the same like saying that the arrival of man on the planet, many millions of years after wild animals, was a boon to the animals as finally someone would give them shelter and protect them from terrible dangers. It is a totally crazy argument. Wild animals have done well without the help of man for millions of years.
I love this: “(but then dogs don’t run around the living-room in Malta, either). “. When is someone going to start making fun of Maltese wives’ obsessiveness?
Yes – clear act of lunacy: the tiger and the obsessiveness, for that matter!
What happanded to this cub since the day this incident was reported?