Greetings Tiger Fans!
This past week was a weather roller coaster, unseasonably warm with terrible storms.
Tornados touched down in the area causing awful damage in the Branson Area. Lucky for us at The National Tiger Sanctuary we were spared any damage.
On the plus side the warm weather brought out a lot of folks wanting to see the tigers.
I thought I would share with you first a real heartwarming story about the folks here at
NTS. I’m sure you all know it takes special people with a true love for animals to operate such a unique place like NTS, so it should come as no surprise that when they encountered two stray dogs looking lost and frightened trying to get across a busy four lane highway they stopped and rescued them. While doing all the right things to find the owner they cleaned and fed the dog and had a vet look them over. What they had was two beautiful Great Pyrenees who were in good health. Almost three months later
Bonnie, they named the female, had seven puppies! Everyone is doing well and since I had never seen Pyrenees puppies I thought I would share a few photos with you all just in case you’d never seen what they look like either.
How cute is that!!! Don’t you just want to snuggle with that pup?

That puppy is sitting saying to us “Aren’t I the cutest thing you ever saw?”

I know it’s tough to tear ourselves away from swooning over their adorable looks but this is Tiger Tales.
I was on a tour this week and a guest asked if our Tigers were a special breed to have stripes on their chest. I explained that Tigers normally have over a hundred stripes and they cover the entire body. In fact no two sets are ever alike, the same as snowflakes, I said.
The stripes on a Tiger’s body are their fingerprints and usually you can look around the eyes and cheeks and never see the same markings. I was curious where they got that impression and after the tour we chatted in the welcome center about their impression of the experience they just had. They told me their mental image of Tigers were seeing
Tigers on TV and sometimes at the Zoo. I will now illustrate for all us Tiger Tale fans where and how most people have come to know exactly what a Tiger looks like.
Let’s start with early childhood memories and the impressions of just how a Tiger looks;
Now that’s a sweet lovable Tiger, who couldn’t love that guy? Notice any tummy stripes?
Let’s move on a few years for more Tiger impressions;
I grew up with this guy!!
Mornings chomping down my cereal looking at this muscular tiger with a blue nose was surely what a true tiger looked like. Gee .... no tummy stripes on this guy.
As I grew older and took interest in the
Sunday papers I went straight to the funny papers. I had my favorites and one of them was this tiger;
Now this was a clever and thoughtful tiger that looked out for kids like me and while
Mom and Dad never saw him he was real in my imagination. Someone who you could talk to and hug, and such a nice tummy with no stripes.
Finally when I got older and was at the age where I had left my childhood toys and I must say, even my cereal behind, I met this guy;

WOW!!! Strong, muscular, just what you want in your gas, which was less than a dollar a gallon I might add, a lot less, but still no stripes on his chest. When I went to see tigers at the zoo they were so far away I never really noticed and I guess I took for granted that all my childhood memories and even into adulthood the tigers had white chests.
That is in fact how this couple thought our tigers had unusual coats. This is how they got re-educated;
Stripes that seem to go all the way around?

TJ lets us see that tigers don’t really have plain white fuzzy tummies, and if you can’t trust a white tiger what can you trust? In fact, now on my tours I make it a point to call attention to this fact and most people are surprised.
I have another tale to tell all you folks about. This involves one of our most favorite big cats, Merlin the Lion. If you are a follower of Tiger Tales you have read and seen pictures of Merlin and his antics and settling in here at NTS.
For those not familiar I’ll start at the beginning which should interest everyone. Merlin was a show cat before he was retired to The Sanctuary. Except Merlin did not care much about being handled and groomed in preparation for his performance, therefore he never performed. Merlin was an indoor cat and when he retired to NTS he was exposed to new sights and sounds he had never experienced before.
His new home had both indoor and outdoor exposure. He could come and go anytime.
Here is a picture from back then;

He had a difficult time at first. He was frightened by some butterflies as I recall. Once he got the courage to venture out of his bedroom into the outside world of his enclosure he was afraid to come back in because of the barn swallows. We finally had to put up fake owls and snakes to frighten the birds so our cowardly lion could come back inside.
Finally when he got comfortable and trusted us all he was moved to a new habitat enclosure. This is where you have seen most of his pictures like Merlin falling asleep touching his favorite rocks;
And Merlin nodding off in the grass, catching a cat nap while being warmed by the sun;

Even Merlin rolling over and acting silly and sweet ............
Merlin has come a long way from timid show Lion afraid of butterflies to blossoming into what people think of as
“The King of Beasts”. I didn’t totally realize it till this past weekend our good friend and supporter Lance McCarty stopped out.
He is a fabulous photographer and took the following picture of Merlin, our truly majestic African Lion ................
Till next week Tiger, and Lion fans,
Steve
Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and at www.nationaltigersanctuary.org
for all the latest happenings here at The National Tiger Sanctuary