Opinion: Reflecting on a frightening close encounter

2010-01-14

Scott Tracey, Guelph Mercury

Despite the passage of 14 years, I remember Jan. 3, 1996, like it was yesterday. It was on that day I had one of the most wonderful and frightening experiences of my life, let alone my journalism career.

I had gone to speak to a fellow named Steve Kriter, who was having a bit of an issue with Nichol Township, as the area was known before being amalgamated into Centre Wellington.

As Steve and I sat at the kitchen table in his home between Fergus and Elora, I became simultaneously aware of a warm breeze blowing in waves across the back of my neck and a low, rumbling sound; as if somewhere nearby someone had fired up an old Harley Davidson.

I turned and discovered, with more than a little alarm, the rumbling and the breeze – which was, in fact, breath – were both emanating from the massive orange head not more than a metre from my own.

The massive orange head belonging to Gretzky, the 450-pound Bengal tiger casually regarding me as one might regard, say, a steak.

“It’s OK,” Steve’s wife, Sherrie, said as she joined us in the kitchen. “She’s harmless.”

That’s a relief, thought I, though I knew “harmless tiger” was about as realistic as “harmless machine gun.”

“That’s just the way she purrs,” Steve said, explaining the incessant rumble that to my not-tiger-familiar ears sounded suspiciously like the beginning of a growl.

It was then that I did either the dumbest or bravest thing I have ever done. I reached out to Gretzky, as I might now reach out to my lab-shepherd cross Wilson, and petted her.

Like Wilson, the massive cat actually leaned in towards my hand as I stroked her enormous head.

And then she licked me. Just a little lick—if there is such a thing when the tongue belongs to a tiger – on the inside of my left forearm.

Shiver.

It’s worth mentioning Gretzky was not the only big cat, nor even the biggest cat, in the room at the time. But Cindy, the Kriters’ 500-pound lioness, didn’t take much interest in me and but for rubbing against me a little while I interviewed her owners – and later resting her paw on my socked foot while I took some photos – she pretty much left me alone.

Which, when you’re a human, is a good trait in a lioness.

I knew about Gretzky and Cindy when I headed out to the Kriters’ place. In fact, I had gone to speak to the couple about their unusual pets, as the township was considering the implementation of an exotic animal bylaw largely to address concerns from residents about the cats.

But I wasn’t expecting the up close and personal experience I had with them. Despite Steve and Sherrie’s assurances the cats were harmless, I knew that wasn’t true.

The Kriters moved away from this area not long after that interview, and the last I heard had bought a private island somewhere in Eastern Ontario.

But I thought of them again this week on hearing news another big cat owner had been mauled to death by one of his own tigers.

Norman Buwalda, 66, who had several big cats on his farm near St. Thomas, was apparently attacked when he went into one of the tigers’ cages to feed it Sunday.

Buwalda, chair of the Canadian Exotic Animal Owners’ Association, had long lobbied against bylaws aimed at controlling the keeping of such animals.

I wonder how many times he told a visitor to his sprawling property the cats were harmless.

Shiver.