‘Adrenaline the whole time’
Zoo promises jaguar won’t be punished after selfie attack
LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. – Adam Wilkerson was visiting the jaguar exhibit Saturday evening at Wildlife World Zoo, Aquarium and Safari Park – one last stop before he planned to leave – when a young woman ran around the corner.
“Help! Somebody help!” she yelled. Wilkerson and his mother, who were at the zoo with his two children, ran around the corner where a jaguar had a woman pinned against the cage – its claws piercing the woman’s arm.
Wilkerson’s mother grabbed a water bottle from his children’s stroller and tried to jam it through a hole in the cage in an attempt to distract the cat. It worked, sort of: The cat dislodged its claw from the woman’s arm but kept its grasp on her sweatshirt.
Wilkerson and other onlookers grabbed the woman and pulled her away from the cage.
“The whole thing happened in a minute and a half, tops. It was adrenaline the whole time,” he said.
According to information from Rural Metro Fire Department and Wildlife World Zoo, the woman crossed a barrier to get closer to the jaguar enclosure to take a selfie. The cat reached out and scratched her arm.
Fire crews took the woman to a nearby hospital with injuries that were not
life-threatening. Her name, age and hometown were not released.
Wilkerson said that after the woman was pulled away from the jaguar, she “fell down in agony.”
An employee from the zoo called 911 after the attack and told the operator the woman’s arm “was in pretty bad shape.”
The 911 operator advised her to keep pressure on the wound. “Keep the cloth on it. Don’t take the cloth off. If it bleeds through, just put another one on top of that, OK?” the operator told her.
“OK,” the employee said. “She’s in, like, pain, like really bad pain.”
“I bet,” the 911 operator said. “We’ve got the fire department en route. We’re going to be there shortly.”
The Wildlife World Zoo is a USDA-licensed private facility that has more than 600 species and 6,000 animals on display and is accredited by the Zoological Association of America and the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums, according to its website. The USDA didn’t find any compliance concerns with the facility during its most recent routine inspection in March 2018.
“The visitor sustained non-lifethreatening injuries to their hand from one of our female jaguars. At the request of the family, paramedics were called. At no time was the animal out of its enclosure,” Kristy Morcom, a spokeswoman for the zoo, said late Saturday.
Wilkerson said the barrier between the viewing area and the jaguar’s cage would be easy for someone to clear.
He said the barrier was about waist-height and surrounded by shrubbery.
“Any teenager or adult could reach in and touch the cage if they wanted to, (but) it doesn’t feel advised to do so,” Wilkerson said.
Animal advocates speak up
When news of the jaguar attack broke, animal advocates feared the zoo would euthanize the cat, a similar outcome in other high-profile zoo animal attacks. In May 2016, Harambe, a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, was killed after a 3-year-old boy climbed into the animal’s enclosure.
“We can promise you nothing will happen to our jaguar. She’s a wild animal and there were proper barriers in place to keep our guests safe – not a wild (animal’s) fault when barriers are crossed. Still sending prayers to her and her family,” the zoo said in a tweet, responding to a concerned Twitter user.
They’re ‘definitely not house cats’
Big Cat Rescue, a nonprofit organization based in Florida, operates one of the largest big-cat wildlife sanctuaries in the world and works to end abuse of the animals in captivity and to prevent extinction.
According to research by the organization, there were 768 killings, maulings and escapes in the USA involving captive exotic cats from 1990 to 2015.
The organization tracked headlines across the country to determine that number. According to its website, “there is no reporting agency that keeps such records (so) the actual numbers are certainly much higher.” The organization determined the cat species in 571 of the incidents. Of those incidents, nine involved a jaguar.
Big Cat Rescue allows visitors to view its 80-plus tigers, lions, jaguars, leopards and other big cats, but it considers its sanctuary different from a typical zoo, according to the organization’s website. The sanctuary provides “educational tours instead of letting the public wander around,” the site said. The sanctuary’s animals were “abandoned, abused, orphaned, saved from being turned into fur coats or retired from performing acts” – not bred for captivity.
The jaguar attack didn’t scare visitors from the Wildlife World Zoo on Sunday afternoon. A steady stream of families pushing children in strollers arrived at the zoo.
Jaguars are “definitely not house cats,” said Michael Hoffman of Peoria as he finished a tour.
As for Wilkerson, who captured part of the attack on video, said he won’t be back anytime soon, even though he knows it was a “freak accident.”
He said he wished the best for the woman and the zoo. “Somebody did something they shouldn’t do, and there was a consequence . ... But I hope she makes a full recovery and really just has a lesson learned.”