Tatiana

I've always loved zoos, and the San Francisco Zoo in particular. But it's a sadder place today. Sometime this afternoon a Siberian tiger named Tatiana somehow escaped from her cage. She killed a young man, and was attacking two more when she was shot and killed by the police. It was almost exactly a year after she mauled one of her keepers during a feeding. (News stories here and here.)

The chaoswolf "adopted" Tatiana's next-door neighbor, Tony, about a year and a half ago. We went to a feeding; I remember Tatiana vividly -- dark-striped, sleek, graceful, and restless. She had come to the zoo from Russia, like my maternal grandmother whose name was also Tatiana, though everyone called her by the diminutive, "Tanya". I always thought of Tatiana by that name, too.

I feel terribly sorry for poor, lost Tanya. The world may be a little safer today, but a creature of great beauty and a fierce, proud spirit has gone out of it.

Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to chatworthy!!! Have a great one!!

More about Tatiana

There are more news articles today; most are highly predictable bits of sensationalism, but a few are worth reading. ABC News has a bit on the victims' condition (critical but stable). And the San Francisco Chronicle comes through with a bit from the OSHA report on Tatiana's attack on a keeper last year:

On Dec. 22, 2006, the 350-pound Tatiana chewed the flesh off Lori Komejan's arm during a public feeding demonstration. A state investigation later ruled that the zoo was at fault for the attack because of the way the cages were configured.

A June report from the state Division of Occupation Safety and Health blamed the San Francisco Zoo for the 2006 attack, stating that the tiger cages were configured in a way that made it possible for Tatiana to bite the zookeeper's arm. The state found that Komejan was attacked after she reached through a drain trough to retrieve an item near the tiger's side of the cage. The tiger reached under the cage bars and grabbed her right arm, but the zookeeper tried to push the tiger away using her other arm, the report found.

Both of her arms were under the cage at that point and her face was pressed against the cage bars, according to the report. Another employee grabbed a long-handled squeegee and hit the tiger in the head until it released the injured zookeeper.

So let me get this straight: it's feeding time, and she puts both arms into the cage with the hungry tiger. And people are blaming the cage design and the tiger?

When it's all over, I think we'll find that Tatiana's tragedy is less about vicious, wild felines than it is about stupid primates.

Happy geek on Babbage's Birthday

Spent most of the morning plugging my new recording rig together. This mainly involved clearing off the little tray table I'm using as a desk so as to have enough room for the Delta 1010's rackmounted DAC/ADC box, chasing down patch cables for the two preamps and the headphone amp, plugging all the wall warts into the squid, and routing cables back to the computer.

Work was interrupted by the need to go out to OSH (Orchard Supply Hardware) for a little plastic garden shed they had on sale. [That reminds me: now that there are people in the house I have to assemble an unloading detail. It's all assembled (a major factor in deciding which of the two possible sheds to buy), so the box is bulky but not too heavy.]

There was one nasty moment when I flipped the switch on the squid and the 1010's power light didn't come on. I searched all over for a power switch and finally decided to see if it was waiting for the computer to power up. It was. Dorsai booted up (there are still quite a few configuration tweaks that need doing -- I haven't done serious work in Ubuntu before -- but those can wait) and the meters on envy24control lit up when I snapped my fingers in front of the mics. So it'll all work.

And my Lenovo Thinkpad keyboard arrived this evening shortly before the pizza -- comes with a lovely black leather-looking carrying case, too.

And one of the Wednesday crowd (hellloooonurse) brought along his new radio-controlled dalek.

So I'm a happy geek.

Tatiana [3]

Still more news: it seems that all three of the mauling victims knew one another, and the two survivors initially refused to give their names. And that there were blood spots along the path from the tiger exhibit to the Terace Cafe. The zoo is now being treated as a crime scene.

Articles here (with a different picture) and here [NY Times], here, and here. The San Jose Mercury has two rather similar stories (here and here) about the dead boy's family.