They're WILD animals By Ernst-Ulrich Franzen March 11, 2010(3) Comments The story about the woman who lost some fingers while feeding a bear at a zoo in Manitowoc, after she ignored warnings and barriers , reminded me of the story I heard about a couple who put their baby on the back of a wild horse in South Dakota to get a really cute picture. We all do silly things at times -- no one is immune -- but treating wild animals as lovely pets has to fall into a special category. Teddy bears and Disney movies aren't actually representative of real bears. Comments (3) View Comments 3 Comments  _  1. TosaLeft - Mar 11, 2010 10:46AM Don't you think that maybe, just maybe some alcohol was involved? 2. tk421 - Mar 11, 2010 11:09 AM It was already approved that alcohol was involved. Stories that begin with a drunk person saying "Hey, I got an idea, watch this!" rarely end well. 3. Tristan Kloss - Mar 11, 2010 11:41 AM Alcohol certainly isn't involved when people decide to keep "pets" like chimpanzees, baby tigers, etc. Stupidity, definitely. Dogs are pets because of thousands of years of domestication. Even farm animals, which have been kept by humans for thousands of years as well, aren't let in the house. So why keep animals that treat human contact with, at best, indifference(, ) and, at worst, violence? In Ernst-Ulrich Franzen's opinion, the woman lost her fingers because   _  .
the zoo keepers didn't warn her of the danger she didn't know the bear was a wild animal she was somehow influenced by cartoon characters she climbed over the barriers and angered the bea