Results tagged “christmasday”

In what must have been the six most shit-laced months of his life, Manuel Mollinedo, the executive director of the San Francisco Zoo, has resigned. Ever since Tatiana the tiger went for Carlos Sousa's jugular last Christmas, and made minor Bay Area celebrities out of the bumbling brothers Dahliwal, the San Francisco Zoo has faced "high zoo employee turnover" and "abysmal morale." Tanya McVeigh Peterson, a zoo society board lawyer will serve as interim director.

Carlos Sousa Jr.'s autopsy report has just been released to the public. According to ABC 7's Dan Noyes, the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office's report details the massive (and pretty graphic) injures Sousa suffered from Tatiana the tiger on Christmas Day 2007 at the San Francisco Zoo after a tiger escaped from her grotto.

Let's not think about that mauling incident or the possibility that one or both of the Dhaliwal brothers pissed into the tiger grotto, prompting the Christmas Day attacks. No, instead let's think about the bundle of joy born at the Zoo this past weekend: a little giraffe, right. Sure, it was yesterday's news, but the adorable image was just released, and the story wouldn't have been complete without it. All together now: aw.

Glorious, isn't it?

Due to the "unusual and extraordinary" Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo -- which resulted in the mauling death of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. and wounding of Paul and Kulbir Dhaliwal -- a three-member tiger team formed by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has been called in to examine the zoo's big cat grotto. While the investigation and renovations are underway, the tigers and lions are currently kicking it indoors. What's more, according to zoo director Manuel Mollinedo, the cats have been subjected to the wonderful world of Disney:

According to today's Examiner, Tatiana will not, in fact, be honored with a gravestone complete old Sicilian widows throwing themselves onto her coffin. Instead, her "body parts will be probed and preserved while the rest, including the tiger’s coat, have already been incinerated. It’s just what happens to all zoo animals after they die."

According to police reports Paul Dhaliwal admitted to "standing atop a railing of the big cat enclosure and yelling and waving at the animal that would later maul them," killing Carlos Sousa Jr. on Christmas Day at the SF Zoo.

In the battle to see who's going down and who gets what and how much in court, new "evidence" suggests that possibly, maybe, perhaps Tatiana the tiger was provoked. It seems that said proof is in the form of a footprint and blood found inside the tiger enclosure at the SF Zoo. According to the kids down at KCBS:

At the bargain price of just $35 dollars down at City Hall this morning, authorities released the emergency 911 tapes of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attacks. The attacks, if you don't remember, occurred on Christmas Day, taking the life of Carlos Sousa Jr. and injuring the now (in)famous Dhaliwal brothers. The footage is raw, with the most unnerving robotic British female voice overlapping the frantic phone call, but to check listen to the audio, go here. According to the Gate:

Delay, delay, dealy in the deadly tiger case

Today Gavin Newsom announced that "a series of public hearings on the fatal Christmas Day tiger attack" that resulted in the killing of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. will start as soon as this Friday. After these hearings, the Recreation and Parks Department Commission will "make a set of recommendations to improve the agreement that allows a nonprofit to run the public zoo." Or something like that. Although it's an attempt to appease the mayor who would like "'to know how this incident happened and what measures are needed to prevent this type of incident from occurring ever again,'" it sure sounds like a lot of busywork for the sake of busywork. Anyway, according to the Gate, Marisa Lagos deftly explains how the zoo is run,similar to a broken home.

What's on the cell phones of those who survived the recent tiger attack?

While not on par with Christmas Day tsunamis, this storm is pretty nifty, huh? Golden Gate transit buses have stopped, power has been knocked out to hundreds -- yes, hundreds! - of thousands of people, and surely snow is falling really hard atop a mountain somewhere.

Damn. Ing.

• SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others.
• Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list.
• Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island.

Less than a week after the fatal tiger mauling at the SF Zoo, much of the news that has (slowly) unraveled from the Christmas Day tiger attacks has been disheartening. From the downplayed info about the too-short tiger pen fence, conflicting evidence that the three boys taunted the Siberian tiger just before the attack, and that emergency protocol wasn't followed by SF Zoo employees, there are more chin-scratching facts to add to the list. Take, for example, the lack of concern the two brothers felt for their dead friend, Carlos. According to a law enforcement source, as the brothers were being transported from the zoo to the hospital, "one brother told the other not to talk to anyone." The source went on to say that "they were more concerned with their car in the parking lot and that it would be okay." (Sure, people have different reactions in time of grief, but still: Ouch.)

Uh oh.

Not only was Tatiana a gorgeous, majestic, and endangered creature. It seems that she had a special talent for sniffing out liars, too.

Update: The murdered teen has been identified as Carlos Sousa, Jr.

Oh la la. The reportedly very prickly Reese Witherspoon and rubenesque Vince Vaughn -- whatever, we'd hit it. Hit it hard -- are in town filming their new divorce-themed romcom, Four Christmases. (According to IMBD, it's about a "couple struggle to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas Day." If you're not in tears already, then clearly you have no soul.) And here they are at a....downtown locale of some sort? We...

Here's the thing about Opening Day-- it's like Christmas Day for baseball fans. You wake up and get to unwrap the shiny new pitcher, shiny new manager, and shiny new lineup. And this Opening Day? It was like getting socks. Ugly, too short, socks that you would never wear in a million years. That’s the kind of feeling a 7-0 shutout loss will do to you.

Michael Keenan, a 43 year old artist is in critical condition after rushing into a fire to save a dog. The dog isn't doing much better. What makes the story particularly intriguing is that in 2001, Keenan jumped into the Bay to save two people whose car had driven into the water.

Jackson is out this week, face-down on the floor somewhere after drinking too much egg nog.

Being Jewish, we made our peace with not celebrating the holidays a long time ago. Frankly, it’s kind of fun to be around the city during Christmas- there’s nobody around and it’s all sorts of peacefull and quiet. Best part of the holidays is that since nobody is around, if you feel like not wanting to do anything for three days other than lie around in your underwear eating nachos and watching football (or, in the case of this weekend, basketball, as the big Christmas Day basketball games are the Kobe/Shaq grudge-fest and the first Pacers/Pistons game since the brawl. Will Shaq smack Kobe? Will the Pacers/Pistons game erupt into another “Slap Shot” like brawl? Or will it turn into one big Christmas movie where everyone spontaneously bursts into a rendition of “Silent Night”?) you can.