Tippi Hedren and her rescued tiger at Shambala Preserve (picture via)
A four-year-old male Bengal tiger called Alexander in actress Tippi Hedren's Shambala Preserve on the edge of the Mojave Desert about 40 miles northeast of Los Angeles mauled caretaker Chris Orr who was then cleaning an enclosure yesterday December 3.
Chris Orr who was currently in stable condition was bitten in the neck, and he had some scratch marks. The 40-year-old man was airlifted to the hospital.
Tippi Hedren, who is the mother of actress Melanie Griffith and gained the stardom after starred in the Alfred Hitchcock horror classic "The Birds," founded the Shambala Preserve in 1972. The preserve is home to dozens of endangered big cats, such as 70 African lions, Siberian and Bengal tigers, leopards, servals, mountain lions and bobcats, most of them born in captivity and given up by circuses, zoos and private owners who could no longer care for the animals.
Alexander was rescued by Tippi Hedren in 2003 after California State regulators shut down a centre that was illegally breeding tigers.
"Who knows what happened to this tiger? It isn't the tiger's fault. It is the fault of the people breeding these animals in the first place that leads them to be here," Tippi Hedren told LAtimes. Tags: