LOS ANGELES - A caretaker at Tippi Hedren's animal sanctuary was
critically mauled by a Bengal tiger, an attack the actress blamed not
on the animal -- but on breeders.
Chris Orr, 40, was bitten Monday in the neck at Shambala Preserve
while cleaning the tiger's cage at the 80-acre wildlife habitat in
Acton.
He was flown to a hospital in critical but stable condition, said
Art Marrujo, a county Fire Department dispatch supervisor.
"This is a terrible shock to us," Hedren told The Associated Press
in a phone interview.
Hedren said she didn't know what may have set the 4-year-old tiger
off. She said she rescued the animal in 2003 after state regulators
shut down a facility that was illegally breeding tigers.
"We'll never know why these animals do these things," Hedren said.
"It's not his fault. It's the fault of the breeders who breed these
animals as pets."
Hedren, the mother of actress Melanie Griffith, said she was pushing
a Congressional bill to ban the breeding of exotic cats.
Orr was cleaning an enclosure with the tiger's primary caretaker
when the 450-pound animal jumped him, said Hedren's publicist, Harlan
Boll.
"Chris was bitten in the neck, and he had some scratch marks,"
Harlan Boll said. "He's in stable condition, and we're waiting to see
how he reacts to the antibiotics."
"Alexander was not playing; he jumped him," Boll said.
A warden of the California Department of Fish and Game was
investigating, department spokesman Steve Matarano said.
Hedren, best known for her performances in Alfred Hitchcock's "The
Birds" and "Marnie," founded the preserve in the early 1970s and
lives on the property, in the high desert about 40 miles northeast of
Los Angeles.
The preserve is home to more than 60 endangered big cats, including
lions, leopards and servals, most born in captivity and given up by
circuses, zoos and private owners who could no longer care for them.
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On the Net:
http://www.shambala.org
