Despite the fact that . . . well . . . Mike VI is a, you know, two-year-old, 300-pound tiger. With big sharp tiger teeth and razor-sharp tiger claws on great big tiger paws.
The New York Times is all over the ongoing cat fight:
TO PARAPHRASE LOUISIANA'S late governor, the ever-colorful "Uncle Earl" Long: Them SOBs done lost their minds!Fans who are in town Saturday for Louisiana State’s home opener against Virginia Tech can get a glimpse of L.S.U.’s latest recruits — football players and a tiger mascot.
Mike VI, a 2-year-old Bengal-Siberian tiger who is expected to grow to 700 pounds, was acquired last month from an animal-rescue center in Indiana.
The tiger was placed on view last Saturday in a $2.9 million, 15,000-square-foot campus habitat equipped with a wading pool, a waterfall, scratching posts, air-conditioned sleeping quarters and around-the-clock care from the L.S.U. School of Veterinary Medicine.
“He probably gets better medical treatment than most of us,” Sean O’Keefe, L.S.U.’s chancellor, said. “He’s one charmed cat.”
That is a widely held view here, where football and a live tiger are seen as essential to the character of the state’s flagship university. But not everyone agrees. The university and the state are on the skirmish lines of a growing fight waged by animal-rights groups, lawmakers and courts to bar the use of animals as live mascots, for staging fights or even in certain types of sporting equipment. Perhaps never before have animals been so prominent on the sports landscape.
When L.S.U.’s previous mascot died in May of kidney failure at age 17, representatives of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals asked the school not to get another live tiger. PETA argued that tigers need to roam over hundreds of miles, not square feet, and that wild animals become stressed in stadiums filled with tens of thousands of people.
(snip)
The L.S.U. case represents perhaps PETA’s most visible attempt to dissuade universities from using live mascots. L.S.U. has kept live tigers since 1936. About three dozen schools keep live mascots. Others have discontinued the practice as being inhumane or too costly for appropriate care.
When L.S.U.’s previous tiger mascot died, PETA sent a letter to the school saying that large carnivores “suffer extremely” in captivity because they are denied the opportunity to engage in natural behaviors such as running, climbing, hunting, establishing territory and choosing mates. Most universities and all major professional teams use costumed humans, not live animals, as mascots, PETA said.
(snip)“Keeping wild animals in captivity is cruel,” Lisa Wathne, a PETA captive exotic animal specialist, said in an interview. “As grandiose as Mike’s expensive habitat may look, it is inadequate for a tiger. The whole idea of carting this animal to a sporting event with screaming people is stressful to any wild animal.”
Let me see whether I fully understand the complaint. PETA's poobahs seem to be upset that a two-year-old tiger is being kept in a luxury habitat that's roughly 10 times the size of my house and, frankly, a hell of a lot better landscaped.
Mike has a swimming pool. I don't.
He has free medical care, accessible at a moment's notice. I don't.
He has his own little waterfall and stream. I don't.
He has legions of adoring fans, and everybody loves him. I have a wife and two dogs who tolerate me -- most of the time.
He has a scratching post. I don't.The State of Louisiana has given that tiger everything a cool cat (Hey! He has AC, too.) could want, excepting a Mrs. Mike the Tiger. But I'm sure that could be arranged.
MEANWHILE, there are those folks living in ghetto shacks, subsisting on ghetto medical care (Translation: Overcrowded charity-hospital emergency room), sending their kids to crappy ghetto schools and dying ghetto early even when they don't get gunned down by feral ghetto thugs.
And then you have the really unfortunate people of Da Slums a Noo Orluns.
Of course, you likewise have the "habitat" of some of the state's best and brightest high-school students a couple of miles up the road at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. Here's a picture:
THIS IS WHERE human citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish -- rich and poor, black and white -- send their human children for eight hours a day. Their high-achieving children who will be attending universities like LSU.
I'll bet some of those kids would take on Mike for his fabulous digs right now, too. Again, the Tiger Thing notwithstanding.
So what trips PETA's trigger amid all the deprivation and suffering of their fellow homo sapiens within spitting distance of the luxurious digs of a tiger mascot? That the tiger ain't got it good enough.
Now, that's rich. Good Lord, you'd think someone had slipped Sir Paul McCartney a cheeseburger or something.
Hey! That sounds like a game plan.
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