In 1994, an Australian tourist decided to visit Binky, the polar bear, in the Anchorage zoo. There were three layers of fences between the public’s path and Binky’s enclosure. When she began to climb them, Binky came over to watch. As she approached the inner fence, Binky reached through, grabbed her leg, biting it several times, breaking the bone, and tearing her shoe off. Other zoos might have put Binky down, but we had the exact opposite reaction: “how dare she mess with our bear!” For weeks, Binky carried her shoe around as his new favorite chew toy. Six weeks later, a drunken, local teenager did the exact same thing with the exact same result. Sadly, Binky died the next year of a parasitic infection.
EDIT: Some people seem to be under the impression that one or both of these people died. Perhaps I wasn’t clear about that. Both of them survived and, as far as I know, are still alive. The next day, tourist said it was the worst decision she had ever made, apologized, and said she hoped no harm would come to Binky because of her stupidity. Her injuries were limited to a broken leg and bite marks that required lots of stitches. The teenager made it further over the fence and Binky was able to take a solid chunk out of his thigh and, it was rumored, one testicle. He required surgery and a long recovery.
EDIT 2: Some animal rights advocates have come here to denounce zoos. I’m not going to argue either side of that issue. What’s relevant here is that Binky was not captured and imprisoned for our entertainment. He was an orphaned baby who would have died in a week if left in the wild. The Department of Fish and Game took care of him for a while. Before they could place him in an outside zoo we petitioned to keep him in Alaska. Anchorage built a large, wild enclosure where he had plenty of space, a pool, and tons of fresh moose for twenty years.
