Theresa And The Tiger

AUTHOR’S NOTEThe evolution of the public zoo really began in France under Louis XIV who approved spending a huge fortune for the upkeep of his menagerie at Versailles. In 29 BC Octavius Augustus owned a collection of animals including four hundred tigers, but it was Noah who assembled the first menagerie and the ark, to put it mildly, must have been extremely overcrowded! The ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Indians and the Romans all kept wild animals in captivity. In England William the Conqueror took over an already existing animal park at Woodstock near Oxford. Julius Caesar had mentioned in the Commentaries that rich English landlords had parks in which they kept ‘pets’. There is a record of a Nobleman receiving a bear from William Rufus. When the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, toured India in 1875-6 he returned with a magnificent collection of wild animals given to him by the Indian Princes. The H.M.S. Serapis sailed from Bombay and the collection included two fully grown tigers, ‘Motee’ and ‘Jahaun’. The sailors renamed them ‘Moody’ and ‘Sankey’! They were very ferocious but a young tiger and tigress ‘Tom’ and ‘Nimmie’ allowed themselves to be led through the streets of Bombay to the docks and boarded the ship as a sailor put it ‘just like Christians’. Once aboard they were exercised every morning on deck. A fifth tiger cub was so fierce that he was named ‘Vixen’. White tigers are very rare and a pair bred in India cost the Bristol Zoo in England eight thousand pounds in 1963. They are very beautiful and have ice-blue eyes.