The news earlier this month about
Terry Thompson’s ill-fated decision to release the exotic, wild, and in
many cases dangerous animals he had acquired — and then to kill himself —
crossed my path in the same way as it did for so many others: brief
reports without much detail, announcing that among others, Lions and
Bengal Tigers had been released near, and were now roaming into, an Ohio
town. Then more substantive follow-up reports and opinion pieces began
to pop up, as the media swung to focus on the owner, the sheriff and
deputies, the town’s residents, and the animals themselves. One of the more interesting, and well-balanced pieces is by Susan Orlean. She asks about the tragic situation the key question:
A small, drowsy town in Ohio, a pile of dead Bengal tigers. How did it come to this? The blame should be doled out carefully. Very little of it should fall on the sheriff of Zanesville, who did what was probably the only thing he could do: give a kill order when darkness fell and Terry Thompson’s wild carnivores were still prowling around town
