Moskovsky Komsomolets: “Tiger to Rescue Other Beasts”
Yulia Kalinina
Prime Minister and His New Pet
Mr Putin has received a female tiger cub as a gift-an endearing, blue-eyed little creature.
It is crazy to have a tiger at home. I can imagine the Prime Minister walking it on a leash, playing with it, and petting its whiskered cheeks-felines do like it. At any rate, cats do. If you pet them the right way, they purr.
Tiger cubs have only one drawback-they grow into huge beasts that cannot be kept at home. Putin says he will give up his little tigress to a zoo after several months, and come to see her as often as he can.
The lucky zoo he has chosen is building what I think is a presidential suite-with a pool and cascade, a grotto, and a baobab. An expert caretaker will be hired to feed the beast with the best meat. Perhaps rabbits and other small animals will be kept for her to chase and retain her predatory instincts.
I do hope the tiger will not be taken away to Penza as the gazelle, another exotic gift to Mr Putin, was. The tiger will be taken to the Moscow zoo, and when Mr Putin comes to see her, he will also look at other beasts, and see that, unlike her, they are languishing in tiny cages with nowhere to have exercise and even hide from onlookers. They evoke not admiration, but pity.
Such menageries were ordinary in the past, but now civilised nations see them as acts of cruelty to animals.
A good up-to-date zoo should be outside the city, where there is more space and quiet, and the air is cleaner, and should not resemble a prison. Large animals should not be caged, but constrained in the open, where they can have all the exercise they want, and not on their own, but in prides or families, the way Nature intended. They should be isolated from noisy visitors, with humans only peeping at wildlife. This is why we want a zoo-to see animals in their natural habitat or, at least, its good imitation.
A zoo is not a collection of exotic living things, but a window into a parallel world.
Years ago, the City Hall intended to build a new zoo outside Moscow. The plan stayed on paper, since it was far more profitable to build villas outside the city, and Moscow stayed with its outdated and dilapidating zoo in Krasnaya Presnya, in the city centre.
Now, there is a chance to get the doomed blueprints off the shelf. Moscow will have a dazzling zoo, possibly the world's best. Construction will start quite soon-in two or three months, when the little tiger grows and Mr Putin comes to the Krasnaya Presnya zoo for the first time.
The man who gave him the new pet did a good deed for all animals.
I wish someone would give the Prime Minister another pet, a granny too senile to keep at home. He would commit her to a geriatric institution and visit her, and thus gain firsthand knowledge of what such facilities are like in Russia.
Really, such a gift would be a great charitable deed.
