With the recent tragedy in Hugo, Oklahoma — where tiger trainer Ryan Easley lost his life before the eyes of his wife and young daughter — the dangers of living and working with big cats are painfully clear. A family’s world was broken in seconds. Out of respect, we leave their grief in peace. But the moment stirs a deeper question, one that has haunted humanity for as long as we’ve had stories to tell: why do we fall in love with creatures we were built to fear — and that were built to be feared?
THE ANCIENT GAZE
We, Homo sapiens, have walked this earth for roughly 300,000 years. For most of that time, the flicker of stripes in tall grass or the glint of eyes at dusk meant danger. Tigers, lions, and leopards hunted while we huddled close to firelight. Evolu- tion carved their images into our bones. Even today, babies stiffen when shown the face of a big cat, as though some ancient part of us remembers what our ancestors fled.
To stand before a tiger now — behind a fence, under circus lights, or even in a backyard — is to rewrite that old script. Where once we ran, now we linger. Where once we cowered, now we reach out. Perhaps owning or training a tiger is not only about power but romance: a whispered promise that we, fragile as we are, can walk hand in hand with what once terrified us.
TIGERS IN OUR MIDST Thousands of tigers pace behind fences in America — more than remain free in all the world’s wild jungles. India, the species’ last stronghold, counts about 3,100. Yet here, in a land that never knew wild tigers, they multiply.
There is a line that has grown into legend: that Texas backyards may hold as many tigers as all of India’s forests. The exact numbers blur, but the fact that the comparison is possible at all feels like folklore. It tells us something about America’s strange love affair with the wild — a longing not for safety, but for danger dressed in beauty.
And Oklahoma has been part of that story all along. From Hugo’s circus heritage to Joe Exotic’s Wynnewood Park, this state has carried the tiger’s myth into living rooms and headlines. When Tiger King became a global obsession during the pandemic, the rest of the world finally glimpsed what Oklahomans already knew: that these animals hold us in a kind of spell.
WHY WE CAN’T QUIT THEM For some, the tiger is a trophy. To own one is to stand taller than fear, to wear power like a mantle.
For others, it is love. Trainers who bottle-feed cubs speak of loyalty, of trust, of cats that curl beside them like oversized house pets. They tell stories of stripes pressed against their chests, of rough tongues that wiped away tears.
But love cannot erase instinct. A tiger is muscle and claw and patience older than humanity itself. Its paw can shatter bone with a playful swipe. Its breath is the silence before a storm. And then there are the eyes — twin embers set in a mask of stripes. They do not soften when they meet ours. They do not search for kinship. They look through us with the patience of a predator and the indifference of something that has never needed our approval.
The gaze is not cruel, but it is indiff erent — the look of a world that does not bend for us, no matter how tightly we build our cages. In those amber eyes, we are not rulers of the earth but passersby, no different from the prey it watches in silence. We tell ourselves we are the top of the chain. The tiger does not agree.
Still, the romance persists. Crowds have gathered for generations to sit inches away from danger, to hear the low growl that makes their own hearts race. We do not come only to see the tiger. We come to feel ourselves in its shadow.
A PARADOX IN STRIPES And so we live with contradiction. In the wild, tigers vanish by the year. In captivity, they flourish behind wires and glass. We mourn their disappearance and yet pay to pose beside them. We call it conservation, entertainment, even devotion. The truth is harder to name.
Look closely and you see why they hold us. The stripes ripple like firelight across muscle made for silence and speed. The eyes mimic eternity, false “eyes” painted on the backs of ears as though to remind the world: I am always watching. Every part of a tiger is design and poetry, strength wrapped in elegance, danger wrapped in beauty.
The Romance We Can’t Escape The tragedy in Hugo is a reminder that tigers are never pets, never props, never safe. They are wild, and wildness cannot be caged without cost. Yet still we dream of them, draw them on flags, tattoo them on skin, and sneak them into backyards.
Maybe our fascination is not conquest but longing. Maybe what we chase in the tiger is not its obedience but its freedom — the reminder of a world we once walked where our hearts beat faster in the dark because survival depended on it.
We may call it ownership, training, even love. But the truth is simpler: the tiger remains what it has always been — a living poem of beauty and menace, reminding us that some wild things can never belong to us.
