Change laws around owning big cats, says Sheba’s owner
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The owner of Sheba, the eight-year-old Bengal tiger that escaped from a 11.5ha farm where she had been hand-reared, has urged the government to reconsider the laws governing ownership of exotic animals in South Africa.
Rassie Erasmus told the Sunday Times of the emotional stress and trauma he had to endure from the public after Sheba’s escape, which made international headlines this week after the fence to her enclosure on Erasmus’s plot in Walkers Fruit Farm, south of Johannesburg, was cut. Erasmus claimed it was an aggrieved former employee.
The community banded together as a frantic three-day search for the predator followed, which ended in Erasmus shooting the animal early on Wednesday morning after she ventured to a nearby farm, about 3km from her enclosure, posing a threat to the lives of residents and livestock.
Rassie Erasmus told the Sunday Times of the emotional stress and trauma he had to endure from the public after Sheba’s escape, which made international headlines this week after the fence to her enclosure on Erasmus’s plot in Walkers Fruit Farm, south of Johannesburg, was cut. Erasmus claimed it was an aggrieved former employee.
The community banded together as a frantic three-day search for the predator followed, which ended in Erasmus shooting the animal early on Wednesday morning after she ventured to a nearby farm, about 3km from her enclosure, posing a threat to the lives of residents and livestock.