Carole Baskin’s Tiger That Attacked Worker Was ‘Just Acting Normal’

Carole Baskin is making headlines again, this time after one of the volunteers at her tiger sanctuary wound up being severely injured when one of the big cats randomly attacked.

The volunteer, identified as a woman named Candy Couser, suffered a serious injury after the tiger, Kimba, bit into her hand during feeding time and began to thrash. Couser is expected to survive, though her arm was almost torn off at the shoulder, TMZ reports.

Baskin and her husband, Howard, also told the publication that Kimba was “just acting normal” because food was present at the time of the attack, and Couser also made a mistake by accidentally going against the usual protocols for the kind of enclosure that Kimba was in, which featured two guillotine-style tunnel doors, the second of which was clipped shut. The couple told the website that usually that would mean not open it, but Couser did.

“This is our universal signal NOT to open a gate without the coordinator coming to assist, but Candy said she just wasn’t thinking when she reached in to un clip it. It is against our protocols for anyone to stick any part of their body into a cage with a cat in it,” they said.

The news has taken Twitter by storm, as it is the only latest event of 2020 that has surrounded Baskin, who one year ago, wasn’t a household name. Many joked about the “Tiger King” star and the fact that the documentary took everyone by storm during the beginning of the pandemic, while others joked about the rumors that have long surrounded her in regards to her first husband, Don Lewis, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1997 and has not yet been found.

Baskin’s popularity has grown since “Tiger King” debuted on Netflix on March 20, which led to her also competing briefly on Season 29 of “Dancing With the Stars,” before being eliminated during the show’s third week. Her newfound fame has led her former husband’s family to get the investigation into his disappearance restarted, with many still believing that Baskin had something to do with what happened to him.

Among other ways she has made news has been in relation to her sexual orientation—she came out as bisexual in October.