Giddiness aside at the prospect of seeing the well-trained creature put through her paces - Britons spoke so differently, another point in Robb's favor - Abby had to keep their expectations realistic.
She'd not spoken to the B.O.D. yet, knowing quite well that the more information she overwhelmed them with at a singular point the better chances she and Robb had of pulling off their venture. Hit them with facts, impress through anticipating every question and concern. Shower them with a well prepared proposal in which they could find no fault.
Having a tiger out in the open though? No question.
'I'm afraid that's entirely impossible,' Abby replied, scrunching her nose again, eyes falling from Robb's to stare at his hands as they picked and fiddled. 'We'd never get that approved. Not after the mauling in San Francisco.'
It hadn't mattered in 2007 that Tatiana, SF Zoo's gorgeous 14-year old Siberian tiger, had been provoked. Slingshots wielded by the inebriated Dhaliwal brothers and Carlos Eduardo Sousa, Jr; potheads with nothing better to do than dangle their legs over a grotto and chuck pine cones and stones at the magnificent creature, taunting her for sport. Their enjoyment had cost the lives of Sousa and Tatiana when the tiger escaped, acting as a normal tiger would and defending her territory.
Shot dead by local officers, Abby recalled a newsclipping which explained that the animal’s head, paws and tail had been removed by the San Francisco Police Department's crime scene investigation unit. Along with her gastric contents, seven total packages were shipped off to the Medical Examiner's Office only to prove through necropsy and tooth impressions that the allegedly aggressive tiger had ingested nothing beyond her zoo-approved diet. No human tissues were contained within, an endangered specimen shot dead through the skull for the sake of a drunken lark.
The memory was enough to put Abby off her coffee and she set it aside for the moment.
'We could look into other enclosures,’ she went on, mustering that pixie smile again. ‘But since the bear exhibit is available I don't see why we couldn't propose a low-budget remodel. Do most of the work ourselves and strip back the habitat to your needs. People could watch your routine from the usual viewing positions. We could even use a body mic, set something up where you could answer questions from the audience?'