Region | Iraq
Cubs make debut at Baghdad zoo
The two new tiger cubs were frolicking in their pool under the date palm trees, playing with red and blue plastic balls and splashing each other.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:01 August 9, 2008
- A pair of rare Bengal tiger cubs that were donated by a North Carolina animal sanctuary despite protests by animal rights activists, are shown to the media for the first time at the Baghdad zoo.
- Image Credit: AP
Baghdad: The two new tiger cubs were frolicking in their pool under the date palm trees, playing with red and blue plastic balls and splashing each other.
It's hard to imagine a nicer day than yesterday, when Hope the tiger cub and her playmate Riley made their debut at the Baghdad zoo.
The two rare Bengal tiger cubs, donated by a conservation society in North Carolina, replace a tiger shot dead by an American soldier after it tried to maul another soldier who got too close to its cage in 2003.
Back then the zoo was a ruin. Hundreds of animals had been stolen or set free by looters during the US invasion and four escaped lions had to be shot. But over the past year, as violence in Baghdad has dramatically declined, the zoo has been reborn.
Two years ago only 100 people might wander into the zoo in a day. Zoo director Dr Adel Salman Moussa said it now gets 10,000 visitors on a weekend.
There's a carousel and a train, spritely antelopes and bored flamingoes, and except for the searches at the gate it could be a zoo anywhere else in the world. That itself is a blessing, said families.
"I like the lions," shouted Fatima, five, when asked what she thought of the tigers. When pressed, she said the new tigers were beautiful too.
Her father, Moussa Hamid Ibadi, said he brought Fatima and her four-year-old brother Yousuf twice a month.
"We used to have nothing to do. No fun. This is the only place where we can have fun," he said.
US troops from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division had come to attend a ceremony welcoming the tigers, which they had transported to the zoo earlier this week in an armoured convoy from Baghdad airport.
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