“Tiger Island was just off the mainland (California) where the big natural park was​—the place where the lioness took a patch of my hair. People circled the island in boats to watch the lions and the tigers running free. I was one of the head trainers who kept the 15 or 20 big cats going through their games. Most of the animals had grown up on the mainland in the show areas. The handlers who cared for them while they were young were mostly women, and sometimes the animals became spoiled​—for sometimes women do spoil little creatures. When the animals get big they are sent out to us on Tiger Island, and if they have been spoiled we’re confronted with a real and dangerous problem.

“One day I got a male lion about 11 months old and weighing 200 pounds.c The first thing to do when an animal comes to Tiger Island is to break him of any sense of possessiveness. If he gets ahold of something and has it for any period of time he feels he owns it. Then if you try to take it from him your life could be endangered. I had a way of testing the possessive spirit. I’d give the animal something to play with, then tell him to leave it before he became possessive​—possessiveness means the right to tear it apart, and sometime the plaything could be you.

“This new young lion’s name was Dandelion. I gave him a gunnysack. When he started to play with it I told him to leave it. I told him three or four times. He growled, reared up on his hind feet, snapping and biting and boxing with me, right, left, right, left. I’d duck or block his blows, and hit him maybe on the nose. He backed me off several yards, to a tree where I had a club. About that time he dropped to the ground and loped back to his gunnysack.

“I could not let him get away with this. I got the club and kept it behind me as I went back. Again I said, ‘Leave it.’ He snarled. I said ‘Leave it’ again. He lunged. I came down hard on his nose. It was for his good and mine. If he didn’t learn to obey he would be shipped off to a zoo to sit in a cage for the rest of his life. For this young lion that could mean 20 years. An hour later it was time for another lesson. I gave him the gunnysack, but he would have nothing to do with it. I waited until the next day.

“The next day he got possessive again, but after three ‘Leave its’ he left it. Good, but not good enough. He had to learn to leave it the first time. We kept on until he got it down to the first ‘Leave it.’ From then on I could be anywhere on the island, no matter how far, and if he got possessive over anything I’d call out ‘Leave it.’ Dandelion’s ears would fold back and he’d take off. So it was good. It was protection, survival.”

Getting Along with Creatures of the Wild

A former trainer in a natural park explains how you must understand the temperament of animals you work with

HE WHEELED in midair to face the lioness, crossing his arms over his chest and face, hoping to fend off her charge. But she was too quick. Her nose plowed through his defense and she flattened him! Her teeth raked across the back of his head, taking off a patch of hair. Somehow he was on his feet and weaving toward an exit. Again she flattened him, but this time she scampered out of the arena.

“She was just playing,” trainer Larry Titus shrugged. “Usually we let the animal out in a larger area and play with it, getting it in the right mood before doing this stunt,” he explained. “This time she was kept in her cage until the last minute and was not prepared to play her role properly. She shouldn’t be blamed. It was our fault.”

Here in this natural park where animals ran free in a habitat that resembled Africa, visitors gathered around a 50-foota arena for special shows. “Imagine you are watching a native running through the jungle,” the announcer would call out. A trainer would burst out of the tunnel with a lion or a tiger after him!

“They would come at 30 milesb an hour and knock us flat, and play with us like a hockey puck. It was rough on us. That’s why we would do it only two or three times a day, and we would take turns.”