I don't know if you've ever seen a private touring zoo. In fact, you can also call it a "disposable zoo", and many animals in it will not survive the next day of exhibition.
I've seen this kind of tour in a small county. The tail feathers of the pigeon are glued into the shape of a fan, which is called the Fugui Bird, and the common snake is painted with green paint and pretended to be bamboo leaf green. Only the tiger is real, and the host introduced that this animal can be used for medicine all over its body. The tiger was dismembered the next day and sold on the streets of the county seat.
It wasn't until I looked at the relevant materials later that I realized that there were not only more private zoos abroad, but even darker.
The owners behind these zoos are not ordinary. There are Mexican drug lords, who raise lions with living people, and they can't even find their bones; There is also a cult leader, who allows beautiful female employees to please tourists with tigers during the day, and becomes their own harem group at night.
There is another one, which is the strange thing I want to talk about today, known as the Tiger King.
After reading this story, you will find that what is more terrifying than the beast is the human heart.
It is a small town of just over 2,000 people, with mostly traditional residents and agriculture as the main pillar of the economy. At the edge of the town is a vast meadow on which a few bungalows are sporadically sitting.
In this humble land, a strange kingdom was quietly born. It covers an area of 96 acres, the size of ten football fields, and has more than a dozen huge iron cages crammed with more than 200 big cats, 176 of which are tigers.
From time to time, employees can be seen holding pistols and even AK47s walking back and forth. Some of them lost their arms, some of them had prosthetic legs.
This is the territory of the Tiger King - the Rare Zoo.
The Tiger King feeds the tigers
The zoo has a dozen or so employees, each paid only $150 a week, and there are no weekends to take care of these beasts from morning to night, eating expired Walmart meat with them. But they have no regrets about it, because in addition to loving tigers, everyone is grateful to the tiger king himself.
Some of the employees had been in jail, some were gay, and it was hard to get accepted in that conservative town, and it was the Tiger King who took them in and gave them shelter.
"These tigers won't judge you." Tiger King said.
In the eyes of the outside world, the Tiger King is a strange Internet celebrity: he is covered in tattoos, his ears and eyebrows are covered with iron rings, he has a blonde mullet head, a pistol at his waist (he always says that someone wants to kill him), and he is in close contact with tigers all day long, touching them and singing affectionately.
In addition, he is also gay and has two husbands, one of whom has a tattoo of "Tiger King Exclusive", and the three of them sleep in the same bed.
Wedding photos of the trio
But even if someone resists the Tiger King in their hearts, they don't dare to accuse him face-to-face. The 176 tigers brought him fame, he was the master of the king of beasts, and many more people showed respect in front of him, and he enjoyed the feeling.
The Exotic Zoo attracts countless visitors, with a ticket costing $15 and a few dozen dollars more to pet the cubs.
At the zoo's souvenir shop, there are many items to take away, the most popular is the tiger-striped panties, which people can wear and imagine being possessed by a tiger.
But the income is nowhere near enough to run a zoo because feeding the tigers is too expensive, requiring $750,000 a year.
In order to stay afloat, Tiger King began to take the tiger to do some public performances in the mall, sometimes earning tens of thousands of dollars a day.
But suddenly, one day after another, one shopping mall after another began to refuse the commercial performance of the Tiger King, which undoubtedly cut off a big financial road for the zoo.
The Tiger King's investigation found that this was because someone had publicly reported him, and this person appeared to be working against him specifically.
It was a woman named Carol.
The woman, who is in her 50s, is a well-known feline conservationist with 1.22 million followers on YouTube and earned $5 million in 2019.
She first sent someone to follow the Tiger King to see which mall he went to perform, and then asked her fans to write hundreds of complaint letters, and the mall had no choice but to reject the Tiger King.
Carol's photo
It wasn't long before Kahlo went on a further offensive, slamming the Tiger King's cub petting business in major newspapers, saying it was animal cruelty.
The Tiger King has a very different view on this, he believes that petting cubs is an extremely effective way to educate, how can it be cruelty to animals?
Tiger King often goes to schools to give anti-drug lectures, and when he brings the cubs to the stage, the students tend to listen more attentively.
In order to get to know the woman, the Tiger King pretends to be a tourist and sneaks into Carlo's Tiger Sanctuary.
He found that the woman lived in a mansion, and her so-called animal shelter was actually no different from his own zoo, or even worse.
Tourists also need to charge tickets for visiting, and tickets are also divided into cruise tickets, night tickets, day tickets, children's tickets, summer camp tickets, wedding tickets, and so on. And the staff at the zoo are volunteers and are not paid.
The living conditions in the shelter are also poor, many tigers are locked in small cages of several square meters, and the weeds are almost overshadowing the tigers.
Such an environment can still be licensed because this woman is on the same front as the animal protection agency. And the zoo of the Tiger King is always fined and troubled by the authorities.
In the eyes of the Tiger King, Carol is exploiting animals, so why should she accuse him? The Tiger King felt that this woman was too hypocritical, and he must fight back.
He recorded a video on his website in which he yelled at Carol and said he was going to cut off her head. He also made an inflatable doll with a carol avatar and took an AK47 headshot.
Although Carol is a woman in her 50s, she was not intimidated by this situation. Wearing a garland on her head and her long hair, like an elderly fairy, she calmly accused the Tiger King of mistreating the tiger.
The effect of the two contrasts appeared, and the video of the Tiger King was criticized by the public as vulgar, and the revenge was completely counterproductive.
To outsiders, Carol dedicates every aspect of her life to the cause of protecting big cats, and she wears tiger-striped outfits in her home every time she goes to meet government officials.
Her shelter is doing well, and visitors always compliment Carol on doing a charity.
Reporting the Tiger King is a manifestation of her righteous act. And the Tiger King's overreaction brought Kahlo a higher prestige.
The Tiger King has no choice but to find another way, and as his research deepens into Carol, he suddenly discovers a secret - Carol is the biggest suspect in the disappearance of her rich ex-husband.
When they met, they both had families, but three years later Carol became the wife of a wealthy man, and the two collected animals together.
The rich man disappeared on a business trip, and five years later, Carol claimed 80% of the family property.
With this money, Carlo's life can be restarted and she can focus on her feline conservation career.
After the Tiger King dug out this black history of Carlo, he began to make a video of Carlo's big revelation. He also found an actress who resembled Carol and fed the tiger with her husband's fake head.
In order to further lower Carlo's reputation, the Tiger King copied Carlo's Save the Big Cat website. He posts some animal shows, tiger cub petting projects on the website.
The netizens who clicked in mistakenly thought that Carol was doing these things, and called to complain.
The Tiger King was complacent, thinking that these methods were clever enough. But he never expected that Carol would turn the situation around with one trick - she sued Tiger King for infringing on the website's copyright.
The lawsuit lasted for almost three years, and the expensive legal fees drained the Tiger King, and in the end Carol won.
The court ordered King Tiger to pay $1 million in compensation to Carol and confiscated two of Tiger King's parade cars.
The Tiger King is very angry that he is about to go bankrupt and lose his zoo. How could he be willing to give it up, it was a kingdom that he had built with great difficulty.
Tiger King, whose real name is Joe Schreibfogel, was born into a wealthy but uncaring family. The Tiger King has a mediocre relationship with the other siblings, except for one older brother.
Joe and his brother love animals, and Joe often brings raccoons, ferrets, and other animals home to take care of; His brother told him that he hoped to one day live in the wild in Africa so that he could see the animals roaming freely in the wilderness.
Joe worked as an adult as a police officer, but was ostracized when he revealed his sexuality. His father warned him not to attend his funeral.
Joe was saddened and jumped off the bridge and decided to move to another city after being hospitalized for a few months. During those days of wandering, he came into contact with animals again.
At that time, one of his neighbors worked at the zoo and used to bring some lion cubs and monkeys home and let Joe feed them. Captivated by these animals, Joe finds his way in life and decides to return home and work with animals as well.
Together with his brother, Joe runs a small pet store and uses the money he earns to buy rare animals and live a prosperous life. But all this came to an abrupt end because of the death of his brother in a car accident.
In 1999, Joe used the compensation from his brother's car accident to buy a piece of land and establish GW Rare Zoo. GW is an abbreviation of the elder brother's name. His original intention was to provide shelter for the animals, which was his brother's wish during his lifetime.
Some people heard about the zoo and discarded some exotic animals that were no longer needed. The first inhabitants of the zoo were a deer and a buffalo, then a mountain lion, and a bear.
No one cared about the animals, but Joe took them all in and took care of them. When he saw these animals, he remembered himself.
Every year on Thanksgiving, Joe also cooks a hearty dinner that anyone wants to eat, especially those who are homeless.
A year after the zoo was founded, Joe welcomed his first pair of tiger friends. After the mating of this pair, he helps to feed the tiger cubs. His deceased brother, he thought, would love them.
Three years later, Joe met a magician, with whom he began to work. Their most popular trick is to turn a little tiger into a big one.
When the magician was leaving, Joe secretly learned his tricks and created his own solo show called "The Mysterious Magic of Endangered Animals". It was during that time that he gave himself a stage name called Zhen Qiqiao.
He also did a cheap solo show online, watched by less than 100 people a day, but he insisted on doing it for a few years.
Joe asked a senior in the industry named Dr. Beast for advice on how to run a zoo. He adores the man, "Dr. Beast is my best mentor in the wildlife industry. ”
A photo of the Tiger King and Dr. Beast
This was a key turning point in his transformation from Joe to Tiger King.
Dr. Beast is the owner of another zoo. The zoo is three times larger than the Exotic Zoo and has more luxurious facilities, with National Geographic magazines and tickets costing a few hundred dollars a ticket.
He is called Ph.D. because he studied Chinese medicine in China and obtained a doctorate. He dropped out of school at an early age and has been addicted to drugs, sexual intercourse, and rock 'n' roll.
His Tiger has appeared in 500 films and has shared the stage with stars like Britney. By 2000, he was an industry leader with annual revenues of more than $1.3 million.
Doctor Beast and Britney share the stage
The exact details of Joe's communication with him were not revealed, but it turned out that he had learned how to make money from Dr. Beast.
Dr. Beast says that tigers are most valuable when they are cubs, but "you can't keep those tigers all the time, as long as those tigers grow up, you keep them and you keep a loser." ”
Dr. Beast also knows how to mind control and trains his employees to be as obedient as animals.
He only recruits female employees, who come from poor family backgrounds, and Dr. Beast has given them superior living conditions in his kingdom, and they have to exchange their bodies and labor for their positions if they want to be in the position.
The female employees of Dr. Beast
Joe later began to control his own employees as well. He would always talk to the homeless people on the street and tell them a job, and those people would literally cry and not want to leave the zoo, even if it was only $150 a week.
Since then, Joe's career has been on the right track, and he has also received the new title of "Tiger King".
The Exotic Zoo is no longer like a sanctuary, it is more commercial, attracting more and more people to visit. Tourists especially love tiger cubs, and they are willing to pay US$25 just to spend six minutes with the cubs and then US$25 to have a picture with the tiger.
Tiger King said his zoo had earned more than $20,000 in five days.
But this also presents a problem. The cubs will grow up, and the tiger king will have to constantly raise new cubs and spend money to raise the grown tiger.
In order to save money, he sold some tigers to other zoos or private individuals to maintain operations. In his best year, his zoo profits reached more than $500,000.
As the fame grew, the number of people who visited the zoo expanded from ordinary people to famous stars. For example, NBA star O'Neal also came here and hugged the tiger on social platforms.
Later, Tiger King also released more than a dozen solo albums.
Now, he's the popular Tiger King, and he's no longer the Joe who's been ostracized everywhere. He laughed and said, "A lot of people envy me for having so many tigers, and it's a good feeling." ”
In a sense, the Rare Zoo has changed from a tiger theme park to a personal theme park for the Tiger King, and he is the protagonist.
And because of the failure of the lawsuit with Carlo, his zoo is facing a huge crisis and is about to go bankrupt.
At this critical moment, a rich man named Jeff shows up, and he says that he is willing to help the Tiger King pay compensation.
Jeff drove his Ferrari to the Curiosity Zoo.
He also raised tigers, although there were only 12 of them. Jeff said that he had been reported by Carol himself, and that he hated Carol and called her "the embodiment of the devil." He invited the Tiger King to his mansion in Las Vegas and gave him tens of thousands of dollars for emergencies.
The Tiger King felt that he had met a savior.
Jeff also brings an assassination plan.
Jeff said Carol usually rides on the trail near her home and posts videos on social media. Jeff used Google Maps to find the way and suggested that a killer could be found to ambush nearby and kill Carol.
The Tiger King hated Carol to the core, and after hearing about this plan, he was eager to try it and put it on the agenda.
He finds a new employee and says to give him $5,000 to assassinate Carlo. The employee agreed.
This employee was brought by Jeff, and Tiger King also asked Jeff if he could be a killer, and Jeff said yes.
The Tiger Queen said that she found him because she saw a tear stain tattoo on his face and thought he had killed people before. In the United States, this tattoo means grieving the loss of a family member, who is waiting for an opportunity for revenge.
In mid-November 2017, Tiger King gave the killer employee $3,000, and soon the killer employee left the zoo. Before leaving, he left a message, "You will read about Carlo's death in the newspapers." ”
The Tiger King was in a good mood, and when he said that in order to prevent the zoo from being forcibly expropriated, he suggested that it be handed over to his name, and the Tiger King agreed.
In Tiger King's view, after solving Carlo's troubles, he needs to replan the future of the zoo so that more visitors can visit and increase revenue.
And the most familiar way to achieve this is to get more attention for yourself.
He hired a producer to help him shoot a professional reality show. When he saw Trump running for president, he thought he might as well.
In the campaign video, he stands with Tiger, "I won't cut my hair, I won't change what I wear, I'm gay, I have two boyfriends." ”
When talking about terrorist groups in the Middle East, he took out AK47 bombs to show his attitude.
Presidential campaign poster
But in the eyes of everyone, he is like a funny clown, and it is difficult to even discern the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
He's known for his funny. Some say he's the "Trump of methamphetamine," for which he was on the cover of Hollywood magazine.
The Tiger King was very proud of this, he knew that he would not be elected president, but he just wanted to bring more business to the zoo, "People are coming to see me, not to see the tigers." ”
But Jeff thought the notion was ridiculous and didn't want him to do it.
The two had a disagreement and were always arguing. One day, Tiger King suddenly discovers that he has been deceived by Jeff.
Jeff wasn't that rich at all, both Ferrari and mansions were rented. He was also a criminal, posing as a charity to receive donations, and was also imprisoned for assaulting his ex-wife.
Jeff's company, which is just a leather bag company, has also done the tiger business, taking cubs to Las Vegas casinos and posing with people. It's quite lucrative, and under the guise of getting close to the tiger, you can sleep a lot of women.
Jeff and his Ferrari
Knowing that the Tiger King was defeated by Carlo, he shows up at the right time and gains the Tiger King's trust. And he only spent tens of thousands of dollars to get the ownership of the zoo.
In order to completely solve the Tiger King, after proposing the assassination plan, he sent a text message to Carlo, saying that he had obtained the handle of the Tiger King, and if he wanted to destroy the Tiger King together, he would reply.
According to Jeff's vision, he and Carol can join forces to send the Tiger King to prison.
But after that, things were a little more than Jeff expected. Carol received a text message, but instead of replying, she handed it over to the police.
Jeff doesn't know anything about it, and he's starting his new business in Las Vegas.
He put together a bus to pick up and drop off people to and from the casino, where visitors could play with tiger cubs. He also stuffed the cubs into suitcases and brought them into luxury hotels. The cubs are very popular with the wealthy, and Jeff charges $2,000 each.
But the hotel found him, and the police arrested him on suspicion of illegal possession of wild animals and illegal business.
When the Tiger King finds out that Jeff has been captured, he knows his chance has come, and he is responsible for the survival of the zoo.
He still has to be famous first.
Although he failed to run for president last time, he gained campaign experience and made another decision to run for governor.
In the campaign video, he said-
"I was the youngest police chief in Texas history (untrue) at the age of 19. I bought 16 acres of land in Oklahoma for only $1,000 (false) and turned it into the largest private zoo in the world (false). As a businessman who has been involved in politics since the age of 19 (untruthfully), I know where corruption is and I know how to solve it. ”
At Christmas, he organized a Christmas parade, standing on an elongated limousine and dragging an iron cage containing tigers, which managed to attract the attention of passers-by.
For this campaign, Tiger King spent a lot of publicity money, of which $80,000 was a check written in the name of the zoo.
Tiger King was in high spirits when he was running for governor, and at one canvassing point, people kept encouraging him, saying that he was doing well.
The voters who voted for him said, "I think Tiger King can really be a good governor." Some people praised the Tiger King, calling him "a man who can accomplish impossible tasks."
One of the voters
Tiger King's votes soared, and as he approached the polls, he asked his campaign team in a serious manner, "What if I get elected?" ”
In the end, although he was defeated, he ranked third among the ten candidates, which also improved his image to a certain extent.
He seems to have returned to the ascending phase of his life.
Just then, Jeff was released on bail and returned.
Only then did Jeff learn that the Tiger King had gone to run for governor and embezzled $80,000 from the zoo. For this, Jeff and the Tiger King had a big fight.
Next, Jeff discovers that a few more nights, the Tiger King has smuggled several of his most valuable tigers to sell. Jeff told him to fuck off, saying that if he saw him again at the zoo, he would shoot him in the head.
One day in June, after deleting the record of embezzlement in the computer, the Tiger King slipped away.
He posted a farewell video on social media, his eyes filled with tears and his voice hoarse, "This animal industry has drained me of the last 20 years. I want to take a break. That's just what I'm saying now. ”
But what the Tiger King was waiting for was not rest, but a prison sentence.
After the first killer set off, he did not assassinate Carlo, but went to the beach to have a party and squandered all the $3,000.
When the police received a call from Carol and found the killer, he said that he had never thought of killing Carol.
In order to fix the charge of murder hired by the Tiger King, the police sent an agent to pretend to be the killer and contact the Tiger King.
The Tiger King was furious when he learned that the first assassination plan had failed.
When the fake killer re-talks to him about the assassination plan, he still says he wants to kill Carlo, "You can't keep that bitch and follow her to the underground parking lot, shoot her, and drive away." ”
Tiger King also said that he would give the killer a $5,000 deposit.
But maybe he was lucky, he happened to have no money during that time, and he always postponed meeting the killer. The police wanted to catch them red-handed, but the plan fell through.
The Tiger King was arrested on a seaside.
After he left the zoo, he found a new love, a young man in his early 20s. They didn't know each other long before they got their licenses and vacationed together by the sea. After more than two months, the Tiger King decided to look for a new job.
On the day of his arrest, the sun was shining, the temperature was suitable, and the grass was still stained with dew, and the Tiger King parked his car in front of a hospital. When he stepped out of the car with his resume, he found himself surrounded by four cars.
Then a crowd of plainclothes swarmed up, pointed guns at him, and shouted at him "Get on your knees."
The Tiger King knelt down, his head bowed, and felt someone pressing his knees against his back. He later said that the stance was like arresting a serial killer.
Tiger King was taken back to the police station and learned that he had been charged with 2 counts of attempted murder by hire. In addition, there are 17 wildlife-related offences that face 79 years in prison.
The Tiger King was very unconvinced. In his view, the 17 charges were just made up by the police.
As he thought about the whole thing, he felt like he had been programmed — from Jeff's takeover of the zoo, to discussing the assassination plan with him, to finally the police intervention.
Anyway, the 79-year sentence made him feel the seriousness of the situation, and he made a phone call outside.
"Do you know why tigers are in cages because their souls are dead? I won't be charged, I'll go to jail, and I'm not going to lose everything because of what someone else does. I'm going to beat everybody. ”
In order to reduce his sentence, he decided to snitch.
He contacted her new husband outside the prison and asked him to remove the documents from a private warehouse and give them to animal protection organizations.
One of the people he reported was his mentor, Dr. Beast. In order to control costs, this person would send adult tigers into the gas chambers and trade large quantities of wild animals.
Tiger King wants to make meritorious contributions by reporting Dai's crime, and with the explanation of Jeff's process of framing him, he even feels that he can be acquitted.
But he didn't expect the police to find more evidence.
After the Tiger King left, the police went to the zoo and dug up several tiger carcasses, which some employees said were killed by the Tiger King. The police have shifted the focus of their investigation and searched for physical evidence of the Tiger King's killing of wild animals.
In March 2019, the first trial of the Tiger King began.
That day, he changed out of his floral shirt, baseball cap and leather jacket, put on a gray suit, and wore a tie to enter the courthouse. But in that formal attire, he still retains the head of a blonde mullet, which is even more bizarre.
After the trial, the fake killer agent attended, and he brought multiple audio recordings. The most heard by the people present was that the Tiger King himself said that he wanted Carol to die and "throw that fat bitch into the sea".
Tiger King has been saying such extreme words for nearly ten years, and usually even more extreme than these, and all employees have heard it. But for the judges, the weight of these words is a bit heavy.
However, Tiger King may not have expected that one of his old employees also appeared in court, and he accused Tiger King of murdering five tigers.
That night, Tiger King had the employee take five elderly tigers out and shoot them.
According to the employee, after the killing, the Tiger King said, "If I knew it was so easy, I would have killed them all." ”
The Tiger King admitted that he shot five tigers, but he said that because they were not in good health, he used a gun to euthanize them, "I have more than 50 tigers buried in the zoo, more than 20 years have passed, no one cares, no one." ”
He couldn't understand why anyone cared so much about it now.
For a moment, he would recall when the zoo was first built, when a group of animals and a group of people were sheltered there. For a long time, no one cared about these animals and people.
He eventually began to complain about Carol, "She's a hypocrite", and he said that her shelter was not as good as the zoo on the side of the road. The more he talked, the more angry he became, and finally the jurors began to get sleepy, and the reporters in the gallery stopped holding their pens.
Carol and her current husband's wedding photos
A month later, the court issued a verdict that upheld 19 charges and, combined with all the evidence, sentenced Tiger King to 20 years in prison.
After the Tiger King leaves, Jeff plans to build a new zoo. He didn't want to stay in the former kingdom of the Tiger King, and he didn't want others to mistake him for the Tiger King.
Of the more than 100 tigers left in the zoo, 39 went to real shelters, and the rest went to Jeff.
The land for the zoo was given to Carlo.
The kingdom that the Tiger King had worked so hard to build, the kingdom that he had done everything to protect, was given to his two most hated enemies, but he could only stay in prison and do nothing.
Now, the Exotic Zoo is closed for good. The garden was overgrown with weeds, the iron cages were empty, and the ground was turned into a mess. There is still an old signboard hanging at the doorway that reads Big Cat Shelter.
One of Tiger King's opponents said that he believed that when Tiger King first adopted animals, he wanted to provide them with a better place to live, but when he found out that tigers could bring him money and fame, he was carried away and no longer really cared about those animals.
The Tiger King always said that he had a special affection for the tiger, but the moment he picked up the gun, the emotion had long disappeared without a trace.
The Tiger King of his youth
He always tells visitors about the original intention of the establishment and his deceased brother. But he probably forgot that his brother's greatest wish was to watch those wild animals run freely in nature.
Where did it start to change? The Tiger King gave his own answer -
It all started when he wanted to have a zoo, he said.
The moment the tiger king put the animal in the cage, he didn't realize that he was also locked in the iron cage of desire.
Bibliography:
1. Documentary "Raising Tigers for Trouble"
2.https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/joe-exotic-a-dark-journey-into-the-world-of-a-man-gone-wild/
3.https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/joe-exotic-and-his-american-animals.html
4.https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/carole-baskin-joe-exotic-tiger-king-zoo-1234622877/
5.https://variety.com/feature/tiger-king-joe-exotic-carole-baskin-where-are-they-now-1203547386/
6.https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/tiger-king-joe-exotic-files-lawsuit-973760/
7.https://www.tampabay.com/arts-entertainment/2020/06/11/tiger-king-joe-exotics-former-park-now-called-zoo-of-horrors/
8.https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/yes-the-tiger-king-really-did-run-for-governor-on-a-legalize-weed-platform
(Some of the characters in the article are pseudonyms)
Editor: Lin Lao Ghost Matthew
The picture in this article comes from the Internet