Ohio Wants to Keep Exotic Animal Mascots in Play

A few weeks ago, the Humane Society of the United States, Ohio's Farm Bureau, and Governor Ted Strickland struck a deal in order to avoid a costly and prolonged attempt to get animal protections on the ballot this November. While the main focus of the three-way deal was animal agriculture, there were a few other welfare reforms thrown in, including an executive order from Strickland which would ban the ownership of exotic pets.

If you already own an exotic pet, you get to keep it under the proposed order, but future sales or purchases would be illegal. It's a good idea — I'd suggest that the vast, vast majority of the pet owning population is not equipped to handle a dangerous exotic pet.

A few days ago, the high school sports fans in Massillon, Ohio, got all up in arms about this. You see, their mascot is a tiger — a live one named Obie — and they want to make absolutely sure that Strickland's executive order won't apply to them. Of course, when faced with a choice between animal protection and high school football, Strickland blinked, then trotted out a spokesperson to assure people that mascots will be exempt from the state's animal welfare package.

What should strike you here is the hypocrisy. According to Governor Strickland's logic, it should be illegal to have an exotic animal in your home to entertain you (he's right, it should), but if the exact same animal is in public, entertaining thousands of paying fans, it's perfectly all right. (Obviously, it's not.)

For Strickland, it's not about animal welfare, it's about a matter of degree. Your home: bad. Your local football field: perfectly acceptable. And when you break it down that way, Strickland's decision to cave in makes even less sense.

By all accounts, Obie is living a pretty good life; a lot of live team mascots do. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is that tigers (or, for that matter, any exotic animals) don't belong on the fifty-yard line. While Obie may be doing just fine, he's also been condemned to an existence that is at best, unnatural. And, regardless of his quality of life, for an animal that is biologically hard-wired to be a solitary predator, spending several hours a week in front of a bunch of screaming football fans is antithetical, to say the least.

What is it with tigers? They're cool, we get that. They're exotic, we also get that. But why do so many people think it's perfectly acceptable to put them in places and situations where they just don't belong? (I would be remiss if I didn't also refer you to the horrific case of Tony the Tiger, who spends his days caged in a Louisiana truck stop.)

I've got some sympathy for the people of Massillon. They don't want to be at the center of animal welfare politics. They like their tiger, and change is scary. They don't want to be the bad guys. But neither do they, or any other sports teams with live exotic mascots, deserve an exemption from an executive order designed to protect animals.

Photo credit: The Pug Father