Beware The Shortcut!
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 8th, 2009
A man who thought he was taking a shortcut after visiting the Great Wall of China has been killed by a Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) in a wildlife park near Beijing.
He was returning from a walk with friends when they decided to save time by cutting across the park.
Park officials say the men ignored warning signs and climbed over three protective fences to enter the tiger enclosure of Badaling Wildlife World. – BBC
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Something equally stupid happened at the San Diego Zoo in the late 70’s. A 12 year old boy got off the moving sidewalk, struggled to go through several bushes, climbed an 8 to 10 foot fence to take a short cut through the gray wolf exhibit. When he was attacked, one of the wolves was shot and killed. Needless to say, his parents sued the zoo and won. Of course, Chinese laws are vastly different than American ones so I doubt if the authorities there will destroy the tiger for doing what comes naturally when idiots get in his path.
It’s too bad someone died but it could have been easily avoided. Climbing three fences personally seems like more of a workout than just staying on the path. Needless to say if you have to climb three fences and see warning signs you should probably not go that way. It’s too bad but it’s his own fault.
I look at the Darwin awards as a “natural” tool to weed out the gene pool…so I’m with the critters on these issues…if you’re dumb enough to invade their environment, then you are fair game (literally). Think the same should be true in zoos too…if you mess with the WILD animals you take your consequences!!!
One of my favorite cautionary instructions: “The shortcut is the longest distance between two points.”
And I have seen enough illustrations.
Ain’t it the truth?!
You’d think people would give up on the shortcut as they always involve some type of obstacle/s, danger/s or both. Furthermore, if there is no danger there is usually a story or legend of danger associated with said cut that ends up causing you to panic and start running. Oh and it’s always dusk when you enter the SC zone. Typically you trip, fall and end up breaking a leg or ear. You then survive on grubs and puddle water for 8 days and just about an hour before they find you a renegade pack of squirrels hopped up on acorn squeezins kill you.
But it WAS a shortcut: a shortcut…to HELL!
Gimme a big “DUH!”
Like that guy at the amusement park who climbed a couple large fences and gates into the Batman rolloercoaster area, and promptly got his head kicked clean off *POW!* Holy Ichabod Crane, Batman!
wow. what an idiot.its sad that he died but still….i mean crossing 3 fences seems more like a longcut then a shortcut.wats wrong with going on the path? what an idiot…
Echoing the crowd here – while climbing that second and third fence, he must have been thinking ‘wow, this is such an amazing shortcut! If I’d stuck to the path there’d be all that tedious walking on a cleared and leveled trail, but this – THIS is easy going!’
Seems like a lot of people everywhere have a sort of built-in sense that nothing can possibly happen to them in the wilderness, something that probably comes from our overly-comfortable lives in more ‘civilized’ spots. It’s like they feel the wilds are a man-made amusement park where the worst that will happen to them is a stern talking to and being evicted if they do something really dumb.
Nature doesn’t care. If you take precautions and plan your actions when you go into the few really wild places left, you can have a wonderfully life-enriching experience. Or you can treat it all like an amused onlooker, do something really foolish and end up forcibly reminded of your place in the food chain as a soft, pink, unclawed member of the primates.
Very likely a tourist, and very likely could not read Chinese characters, therefore unaware he was in a Siberian tiger section of the park. Less of a “Darwin Awards” story – more of an unfortunate “Language Barrier” story.
Update: (The individual killed was Chinese.)
An 18-year-old migrant farmer was mauled to death by a Siberian tiger after mistakenly entering the grounds of a wild animal zoo in Beijing after touring the Great Wall, zoo staff confirmed Sunday.
The man surnamed Guo, from Hebei Province, entered the Badaling Wild Animal World in Yanqing County with two companions at around 4:20 p.m. Saturday after climbing over three-meter-high fences without paying attention to the warning boards saying there were wild animals inside, the zoo said.
Two companions of Guo escaped but Guo was caught by a Siberian tiger and mauled to death on the scene.