The Bengal tiger which bit off the arm of a Chipperfield circus keeper, thirty-two-year-old Nigel Wesson, was not to blame for the incident, its breeder said yesterday. "The tiger didn't do it. His teeth did it."
Four-year-old Rajah was in his pen with his sisters, Sita and Rani. Mr Wesson's left forearm was severed below the elbow when he put it into Rajah's cage on Wednesday evening, ignoring the usual procedure of using a metal bar to open a partition and bash the tiger's head in. "I thought they were my friends," the distraught Wesson said, "I trusted them."
Surgeons who later amputated the limb above the elbow gave Mr Wesson some advice at the hospital, "You may as well take this with you and feed it to Rajah. It seems like a waste just throwing it away."
Rajah was bred and beaten up for circus work, and is hired out each summer to European circuses. Circus owner, Mr Turncliffe, was confident that the tiger would fulfill this year's engagements with other inexperienced forearms in Belgium.
"Rajah is a very good-natured tiger who loves the trainers who beat him, and there is no reason to think that he will be too full to cope with future forearms offered to him," he said.
"He probably thought that Mr Wesson was feeding him, with himself. It's not uncommon for tiger trainers to have this kind of personal commitment to the animals.
As far as I'm concerned Wesson is an experienced tiger keeper. He was also very brave, telling everyone to calm down, whilst he gently coaxed Rajah to let go of his jugular.
Anyway, I really don't see how we can blame the tiger for this incident. It's a completely humane method of removing a circus trainer's forearm. It was just one of those things, over in a couple of seconds."
Wessons's wife added to this, saying, "Nigel was very brave. He simply placed his forearm in my handbag on the way to the hospital. It was a bit gross, like carrying a dog's bone home from the butcher's without the wrapping. But I did it for him."
A portable television normally watched by the tigers in the evenings, featuring a local advertisement for TCP lozenges with a tiger biting a man's throat out, was later withdrawn from the cages.
