I felt a momentary pang of regret about the recent death of a tiger in Jackson Township, but I frankly can’t be obsessed with it when gang deaths continue to rise in nearby Lakewood with nowhere near the media scrutiny accorded this single freakish incident involving an animal penned up half a world away from its natural habitat. What I do find very troubling is that a significant portion of our population (at least, those who write letters to, or are quoted in, the papers) seems to have lost its ability to make distinctions between animal behavior and human behavior.

Most of those rising to the defense of the hapless beast, including Linda Lifrieri in her article for WildNJ, describe the tiger as "innocent." I readily agree that the animal was not "guilty"; however, in no way can it be described as "innocent." "Guilt" and "innocence" imply the capacity for moral judgement, the ability to distinguish right from wrong and to act upon that knowledge, and free will. These are traits peculiar to the human animal, products of an evolution spurred by our possession of a prehensile, opposable digit (i.e. the thumb), which led to the ability to create complex tools, which in turn led to both a larger brain and the leisure time to ponder abstract notions. Other species operate primarily from the dictates of instinct – hunger, fear, sexual desire, the drive to procreate.

Anyone who has owned a common domestic housecat (as I have for much of my life) has doubtless seen evidence of these drives. Tabby (in my case, Buttons) may be well-fed, have a warm, dry place to sleep, and humans who shower it with love and affection. But all the Little Friskies in the world does not stop a cat from reverting to its natural state – that of a predator. I have watched my cats in action, and cleaned up the results of their efforts, enough to know that deep inside that cute little purring furball is a beast that not only kills, but kills because that is what it does. The proof is in the state of the victim – usually intact, indicating that the cat did not stalk its prey in order to eat it.

I lay the blame for this human blindness to the reality of nature squarely at the feet of Walt Disney. For the better part of this century, Walt, his heirs and assigns have strode like a Colossus over American culture, rulers of an empire built on the shoulders of an array of anthropomorphized animals. The first manifestation was Mickey Mouse, Disney’s earliest and most ubiquitous creation. Consider that, prior to Mickey’s debut in "Steamboat Willie," most folks, especially those who lived and died in the teeming tenements of the Lower East Side so well documented by Jacob Riis, didn’t view mice as endearing riverboat captains whistling a jaunty tune, but as filthy, disease-carrying vermin.

Ensuing years saw Disney expand upon this profitable trope – "Bambi," "Dumbo," "Winnie-the-Pooh," all those nature documentaries narrated by avuncular types ascribing human motives to animal behavior. It continues today, most ridiculously in the mega-hit "The Lion King" – a beautiful piece of animation, perhaps a masterwork, true; but a glaring example of the Disneyfication of nature. The conflict between Simba’s father and Scar is not portrayed for what it is (a battle between two alpha males for dominance over the females of the pride), but as the struggle between good and evil – a theme that is carried over into Scar’s plotting against his nephew, Simba. A moderately clever reworking of "Hamlet" with a happy ending becomes yet another sermon to children that, despite the laws of nature and centuries of evolution and the daily dictates of eat-or-be-eaten, all creatures are just part of one, big, happy "Circle of Life."

A final thought: in all the ink that has been shed over this incident, almost no one has questioned the reason why Joan Byron-Marasek is running a tiger "preservation society" in the first place. There has been no indication that she is raising the animals in order to help replenish their stocks in their native south Asia; the only hint of the nature of her business was a brief mention in an early news account that she raised them for the purpose of study and display (sale to zoos? rental to television and film productions?) If that is the case, I don’t see much difference between what she does and the actions of those who breed puppies and ferrets. Breeding and raising a jungle cat in captivity in suburban New Jersey cannot provide much insight into the lives of the beasts in the wild, or help increase their numbers in the places they truly belong.

I do not fault the police and veterinarians who ultimately brought the tiger down. They tried to handle the situation in a way that would be humane to the animal. But as night fell, they faced a choice: gamble that the tiger’s "innocence" would win out over its fear and its hunger, and prevent it from acting on its deepest instincts; or ending the drama and the threat to the people who lived and worked nearby. They made the only right decision.