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Training Tigers Thrilling, But Dangerous

Sarasota Herald Tribune photo by THOMAS BENDER

Reba, a 7-year-old female lion, was rescued from a group using her for photos when she was a cub. She now lives at the Big Cat Habitat and Gulf Coast Sanctuary.

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By Billy Cox of Sarasota Herald Tribune

Published: February 17, 2008

At Big Cat Habitat and Gulf Coast Sanctuary, they save the best for last.

After the trained dogs have cleared their hurdles, after the grinning chimpanzee and the cockatoo and the miniature horse and the slapstick bears have paraded back to their cages, the tigers take the floor.

The big beasts enter the 14-foot-high show cage one by one, through a small doorway, and they shamble smooth as molasses to their appointed roosts. The biggest, Conan, is simply a monster.

At 700 pounds, the Bengal tiger is twice the size of Tatiana, the notorious San Francisco Zoo tiger cut down in a hail of police gunfire after fatally mauling a tourist on Christmas Day. Conan is joined by four others, most notably Samson, the 550-pound white Bengal with the ice-blue eyes.

A couple of hundred people have gathered this Saturday afternoon in the chairs and bleachers beneath the tin-paneled arena. There are babies and geriatrics and everyone in between, all of whom have been momentarily reduced to children by the hypnotic kings of the food chain.

The creatures are led through their paces by unarmed, 27-year-old Clayton Rosaire, heir to the famed circus dynasty. He tells his audience he has known them since they were cubs. He does not tell them the carnivores here have sent him to the hospital four times. That story comes after the house clears.

The animals hit their marks flawlessly, more like dogs than house cats. They leap over one another, they rear up on their haunches, they tower like Lipizzaners above Rosaire, they backpedal upright. In comic contrast, Conan, supine, follows verbal cues and interrupts Rosaire's patter with precision swats of the tail.

They are also movie stars.

"Circus Rosaire" - an affectionate portrait of the Sarasota family whose history with animal acts runs nine generations deep - won the 2007 Sarasota Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The 93-minute indie production, written and directed by Robyn Bliley, recently toured the prestigious Santa Barbara International Film Festival in California, as well as the Slamdance Film Festival opposite the Sundance hoopla in Park City, Utah. From her home in Los Angeles, Bliley says she is negotiating for wider theatrical release, or perhaps even a television series.

Such is the continuing legacy of Derrick Rosaire, Kay's father, the late British circus magnate whose audiences spanned Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, and Richard Nixon. Under the guidance of grandson Clayton, the Rosaire menagerie continues to tour, mostly during the summer.

Until then, local two-hour shows are open to the public on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the 30-acre compound off Palmer Boulevard east of Interstate 75. But Big Cat Habitat is not a zoo, nor does it have a breeding program.

In 1987, the Rosaires turned it into a nonprofit sanctuary for animal rejects and castoffs; today, the inventory includes 32 lions and tigers, a dozen bears, emus, large land tortoises and exotic birds. Although the Rosaire animals were born and raised in captivity, no amount of familiarity can fully eradicate feral instincts, like the stalking and pouncing impulses common among house cats.

But there is a major difference.

"Getting bit by a tiger is worse than getting shot or stabbed, because there's so much pressure or force behind it," recalls Clayton Rosaire, who was once bitten on the top of the head while trying to break up a tiger tussle. "It's like getting hit by a car with nails."

Kay Rosaire still bears scars from a live performance in 1991, when a tiger grabbed and dragged her by the hip.

She was saved when a lion intervened and swatted the tiger away.

Eighty-four stitches later, Rosaire says the attack was not malicious, and calls it her "only serious accident" since she began doing shows in 1973. She insists the bonding of traditional circus animals with humans is no different from domestic cats and dogs.

"It's totally emotional," she says. "They express themselves physically. Chimps groom you, and cats lick you. They all want your attention, just like children, and when you spend time working with them, the bond becomes stronger. My father called it teaching, not training."

It is a point Rosaire emphasizes again and again to her weekend audiences. Because, without naming names, she says, "There is a very dangerous bunch of people out there who believe that animals like these would be better off dead."

In fact, the 1.8 million-member People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has long advocated the termination of zoos and other facilities that house exotic species.

"There's not a zoo in the country that can give tigers the space they need to be physically and psychologically healthy," says PETA's Lisa Wathne from Seattle.

Wathne insists the headline-grabbing Christmas Day tragedy involving the 3-year-old Siberian who attacked three visitors and killed one was partly borne of frustration. The same animal mangled a zoo employee's arm a year earlier.

"No one should be surprised when a captive animal acts upon an opportunity to harm people," she says.

"They're wild, they're cooped up, and it's never-ending boredom. These animals aren't performing because they want to. They're performing unnatural behaviors."

But maulings by captive big cats are rare in Southwest Florida, according to Richard Botelho, a federal animal-care inspector for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Eight years on the job, and only one violent episode - involving a tiger who nipped the fingers of a youngster in Fort Myers - comes to mind. Botelho has cited the Rosaires for violations such as insecure fencing and spoiled animal food, but he said the family fixes any problems quickly.

"Eventually, something bad's going to happen to everyone who deals with lions and tigers," Botelho says. "It's part of the job, man. You've got to know what you're getting into."

Clayton Rosaire, who has been on the receiving end of a tiger bite calibrated by experts at roughly 1,500 pounds of pressure per square inch, is under no illusions. He says tigers are stimulated by regular interaction with humans, which explains why they obey commands. Some of them, anyway.

"They all have individual personalities. You have to watch their behaviors and see what they like to do and what they don't like to do," says Rosaire. "They're very smart animals. And they read you just like you read them."

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