Nice Cat!

[Donut]

Oh my God - this gets worse.She was taking part in a show!

A woman from south Wales is recovering in a Spanish hospital after she had her arm torn off by a lioness at an animal sanctuary.
Fifty-four-year-old grandmother Annie Richards from Neath is in a stable condition in hospital after surgery following the attack on Wednesday.

The initial operation by surgeons in the town of Villajoyosa was described as "successful" by a spokesman at the British Embassy in Madrid.

Mrs Richards, who was visiting the El Arca Safari Park near Alicante with her sister, is understood to have been invited to put her hand in the lioness's mouth at a tourist show.

But the show went wrong when the lioness - named Marta - turned on the tourist and ravaged her arm..

The animal mauled the woman's hand and eventually ripped her arm off from the elbow.

The limb was not recovered because other lions pounced on it, the Spanish news agency Efe reported.

Mrs Richards' husband Jimmy, a hospital porter, and her son Michael, 32, and daughter Amanda, who is 30, were told of the accident last night.

Bedside Arrangements by the tour operator were being made to fly the family to Spain.

Mrs Richards is recovering in a hospital in Benidorm after the surgery to amputate her injured arm.

Her sister Carol Jones, from Bryncoch, south Wales, is at Mrs Richards' bedside in the hospital.

A spokesman at the safari park in the town of Benimantell, which specialises in endangered species, said it is the first time they have had any kind of accident there.

The spokesman said he had worked there 20 years and had never known an accident.

BBC

[/)eathKiller]

Originally posted by Leonis: I just hope this will be a lesson to any who think they can take on big cats and win... [img]graemlins/choc.gif[/img]

Right on!

[Grojlach]

Her arm was torn off after she was invited during a tourist show to put her hand in the lion's mouth? Ouch. One huge lawsuit, coming up...

[Cloudbringer]

Oh yah...major lawsuit....now again my question, "HOW STUPID do you have to be to invite someone to do that in your show with WILD animals?"

OK, Donut, now you can tell us they were mini pseudo lions and tame as my housecat, right? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Talthyr Malkaviel]

*has a newfound respect for/fear of Cloudy's housecat* [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Hmm, the being invited to do so does change the situation, but, as Cloudy's question points out, merely shifts the question of "How stupid?" on to other people.

[Kakero]

hmm..I sense she is gonna sue the zoo for a large sum of money.

[johnny]

Originally posted by Kakero: hmm..I sense she is gonna sue the zoo for a large sum of money.

If it's going to be for as much money she can hold in both hands, the zoo will be fine.

[Barry the Sprout]

Originally posted by Kakero: hmm..I sense she is gonna sue the zoo for a large sum of money.

Frankly, good on her. She was told to do it by the staff and then lost her arm in the incident. Aside from the pain and suffering at the time the loss of earnings from losing an arm will be pretty high, to say the least. This is going to irrevocably change that womans life, and not in a good way. And as far as I can tell the zoo is responsible for it. Just my 2 cents. Or arms, as the case may be.

[SomeGuy]

You gotta be pretty stupid to do something like that....

[Epona]

That changes the situation somewhat. If she was led to believe that the lions were tame then the zoo made a grave error - they have a duty towards the safety of visitors. But then again, each individual also has a responsibility towards their own safety so I would say the woman herself is not entirely without fault.

Unfortunately it seems to me that more and more we are seeing people abdicating responsibility for their own actions, a trend I don't particularly like. I wouldn't jump off a cliff if someone told me it was safe, and nor would I try to pet a lion. I check the temperature of my coffee before trying to drink it whether there is a warning on the cup or not.

I'm not saying that the zoo is not responsible in this instance, if there is no more to the story then that seems to be the case. I just don't like seeing cries of 'sue' all over the place for every little thing that goes wrong. In this case it may be justified, I'll wait to see if there's any more to the story.