Speculations are being thrown around that Tatiana the tiger was "underfed," possibly urging her to go on a fatal eating binge last Christmas. It seems that when Tatiana arrived at the SF Zoo in December 2005, she came in at a normal 292 pounds. But when she was killed by the SFPD last December, she weighed in at a pin-thin 242 pounds. (No word yet as to whether or not she was cutting herself as......

The Examiner is reporting that morale is low over at the San Francisco Zoo: low attendance, a year's worth of the maintenance budget squandered in two months on necessary upgrades to the zoo (whose figure apparently "doesn’t include a $1.8 million bond released by the Recreation and Park Department to pay for upgrades at the tiger grotto"). Following the infamous tiger attack on Christmas Day, the zoo is plagued by numerous problems that its......

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......

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. The report confirms the cause of death: “Blunt force injuries of the head and neck (predatory cat bite(s)).” The evidence......

The Intrepid Travel, some sort of online travel guide -- one that clearly has no access to the internets, TV, newspapers, phones, water coolers -- is bestowing the SF Zoo (along with 60 others) with the title of Best Zoo of 2008. Yes. Yes, they are. While the title of Most Interesting Zoo of 2008 seems appropriate, we still can't figure out if this is some sort of joke. Here's part of the remarkable......

Looking to get a few bucks out of the city for the Christmas Day tiger attack that claimed the life of their (alleged) friend Carlos Sousa Jr., Amritpal and Kulbir Dhaliwal have filed claims against the city. Finally. And our sources sent SFIst a copy of the claim! (We'll try to get that up for you shortly.)...

The big cat grottoes re-open for public view....

Glorious, isn't it? Raising the walls of the grotto 16.4 feet, in order to meet the minimum guidelines of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the first phase of improving the SF Zoo's four big-cat grottos is complete. The tweaks were needed, as most of you know by now, after Siberian tiger Tatiana escaped and killed Carlos Sousa Jr. during the now infamous Christmas Day tiger attacks. The second phase of the project, according to......

Wow. This is a bit depressing. Scratch that, a lot. According to the Chron, former directors of zoos around the globe gave the San Francisco Zoo a failing grade when it comes to caring for animals. Some of the zoo's problems are "severely outdated exhibits and animals that behave unnaturally." Take, for example, glaring issues as the African Savanna exhibit -- which lacks enough shelter or food for animals, according to Peter Stroud, a......

Danielle Steele, Vanessa & Bill Getty, Trevor & Alexis Traina, and Serge & Tatiana Sorokko are wealthier than you, punk. "A San Francisco family is looking for a personal assistant / household manager to join our team on a long term basis." Are you that someone? But wait, there's more: in addition to joining a family that refers to themselves as a "team," you--a "highly poised, polished, professional, and articulate" cad--will also conduct interviewing,......

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. The trio, it seems, were also hopped up on mary jane and expensive vodka. Toxicology reports turned up numbers indicating that Paul was especially wasted during the attack. His blood alcohol level was 0.16......

Tiger attack victims "yelled" at Tatiana. [SFGate] SF Main Library re-opened its first floor. We had no idea that is was closed. Still, yay! [CCBlog]Evacuating together. Aw. (Wasn't this an SNL commercial parody ages ago? With Phil Hartman and Victoria Jackson? Also: we're old.) [The Snitch]Staph infection hysteria is the new AIDS hysteria. So retro. [SFBG]Last night's gruesome N Judah Municide. [N Judah Chronicles]You know who's down with Barack Obama? Your mother. [Examiner]Duffy's (formerly known......

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: ...a significant amount of blood was found on an exhibit sign inside the tiger enclosure,......

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......

Another public display of commemorative prose, folks. What with this plus the animals trying to escape from the zoo, you'd think the end is nigh, a big earthquake is on its way, or Aunt Flo has come for an extended visit. While mincing down Third Street to AT&T Park to catch some tasty waves, we came across the most darling bouquet of fresh flowers, above, lying on the sidewalk. While trying to steal them, we......

Although we can hardly see our computer screen through the hurricane of tears pouring from our eyes, we present to you the following poem of pain for Tatiana the tiger, penned by SFist poet laureate Ginadee62 in response to "Tatiana the Tiger's Official MySpace Memorial Page." This reader easily wins the award for Comment of the Week. Read it. And weep. Beautiful and majestic Tatiana, what have they done to you...the creatures, said to......

Well, not "all," per se, but on Monday night Paul Dahliwal, one of the three people involved in the Christmastime tiger attack at the SF Zoo, telephoned Carlos Sousa Jr.'s mother, Marilza, to tell her that he and his chums were "dancing, talking, and laughing" moments before the attack. (Doing the Turkey Lurkey dance, no doubt.) It seems that Paul also told her that they were not taunting the tiger, something that has been......

Tiger attack victim, 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr., was mourned last night at the Five Wounds Portuguese National Church in San Jose by hundreds of loved ones. His altar was decorated with a flowers, including Raiders logo. It seems Sousa was an Oakland Raiders fan, reportedly wearing a Marcus Allen Raiders jersey the day he was killed at SF Zoo. According to the Gate, some of Carlos' "friends showed up at the funeral wearing 'In......

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......

Oh my God, you guys, no way. Get this: the New York Post was wrong. What's next: Intelligent Design? Celebrity weddings? Our meth-induced epiphanies that the CIA, in cahoots with the Norteños, are reading our emails and listening in on our phone calls? See, it seems that "[n]o slingshots have been found" and that the NY Post was wrong. And we refuse to believe anything Rupert Murdoch-related is less than perfect. Thankfully, according to......

SFist Jim reports that he went to the reopening of the San Francisco Zoo today, where he snapped the picture, above, of the tributes being placed at the zoo's tiger statue, and which he described as "a big bust." When we first read SFist Jim's email, we thought he was talking about the tiger statue (we were like, "they made a bust of Tatiana? So fast!"), but no, he meant the crowds, which were......

Damn. Ing. An eyewitness has stepped forward, giving her account of what she supposedly saw on Christmas Day at the SF Zoo. Jennifer Miller, who visited the now infamous park with her husband and two small children, tells the Chronicle what she claims to have seen, just before the Tatiana mauled Carlos Sousa Jr. to death and injured Paul Dhaliwal and Kulbir Dhaliwal. "The boys, especially the older one, were roaring at them. He......

The morbidly curious, a smattering of animal enthusiasts, and, of course, the media will line up to get into the SF Zoo when it reopens to the public at 10 a.m. tomorrow. In addition to a Tatiana-free environment, zoo visitors will also notice a few other changes. For instances, new signs reminding visitors that they are "guests in the [animals]" and not to "tap on glass, throw anything into the exhibit, make excessive noise, tease......

The Dhaliwal brothers, they seem like a couple of nasty little rapscallions. Ruffians, we'll go so far as to say. Why? Because after last week's Christmastime big-cat attack - a mauling that took the life of their "friend," Carlos Sousa Jr. - it seems that at the two brothers "had slingshots on them at the time" - well, at least according to "sources" at the New York Post. (Seriously, aside from aspiring serial killers,......

As seen in the graphic above (pulled from the LA Times), and because of last week's fatal attacks, tiger security improvement is needed. Soon. In 30 days, according to the Gate, SF Zoo will have a brand spanking new tiger-grotto security system. The architect who created the zoo's Grizzly Gulch exhibit, Sam Singer, will also now design the safer new tiger grotto. Although no details of the new tiger grotto designed have been released, we're......

Where to begin? Well, for starters, the page's score set to The Lion King's eleventh-hour song "Circle of Life." While we tend to loathe music set to any page on the webs, this is fitting. And touching. But Tatiana's official postmortem MySpace page offers more than just Elton John-manufactured teardrops. You can find informative links to such items as the transcript to Nancy Grace's show on the tiger attacks, a makeshift memorial of sorts,......

Behold, the tight-lipped duo who, at this point last week, couldn't have imagined the death and subsequent big-cat madness in store for them today. Under supervision at San Francisco General Hospital, due to severe bite and claw wounds since last Monday, Paul Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23, were released into the wild yesterday afternoon. In addition to the brothers' hospital release, NPR reports that all the big cats at SF Zoo will most likely......

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.......

Uh oh. According to the cats over at the Chron, an "18-page 'Emergency Procedures' manual, written in 2006, spells out what zookeepers, guards and even the receptionist in the main office are supposed to do if a 'Siberian tiger is out of its enclosure' or any other dangerous animal escapes." (It's always the receptionist's fault, isn't it? The fall guys of the modern world, really.) Basically, such emergency procedures as a "Code One" call,......