By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
CASSOPOLIS – With orange-and-black tigers and three rare "snow whites" performing three free shows daily at the Cass County Fair (3, 6 and 9 p.m.), the hot sun makes it seem like their stripes are being bleached away – or maybe melting into butter, like in "Little Black Sambo."
In that tale, a little boy sacrifices his new red coat, blue trousers and purple shoes to a tiger that wears his shoes on his ears, although the Bengal bunch from Florida's Marcan Tiger Preserve is more inclined to waltz on their hind legs, balance on balls or stand on stools.
"Little Black Sambo" was an 1899 children's book by Helen Bannerman, a Scot living in India.
Sam outwits his predators and returns safely home, where he gobbles 169 pancakes for supper.
The story was a children's favorite for half a century before racial politics made it controversial and "Sambo" a slur.
The story is set in a fairy tale India, with tigers racing around a tree until they turn into "ghee," rendered as butter.
The estimated 1,600 tigers remaining in the wilds is down from 40,000 at the beginning of the last century.
"That's why it's so important to have conservation programs like Florida's Marcan Tiger Preserve (www.marcantigers.org)," Michael Inks of Indianapolis narrated. "You'll notice the things we ask our tigers to do aren't particularly physically tasking. The idea here is to give them mental exercise or to encourage them to think."
There are only 25 snow whites in existence, and three are spending this week in Cassopolis. They have been gone from India for 100 years.
Females range in weight from 300 to 400 pounds. Males tip the scales at 400 to 600 pounds.
They don't eat little boys or pancakes, but they do ring up quite a grocery bill for creatures that sleep 15 to 18 hours a day whether the temperature is 95 or 45.
The tigers travel in a 40-foot mobile housing unit that allows them to move around and to interact in transit.
Though trainer and veterinarian Andy Spolyar, in his "Stay back 15 feet" T-shirt, cuddles with the big cats, he's the bringer of meat treats.
His charges are not tame. Just a few generations removed from the wild, they retain all of their wild instincts.
These tigers are not allowed to hunt for food.
Their raw red meat diet comes from beef, horses and the occasional deer.
Chicken fed as a supplement is downed bones and all.
Vitamins formulated especially for carnivores are added to their food.
Each big cat consumes 10 to 20 pounds of meat a day, making the food bill one of the biggest chunks of the road show budget.
Snow white tigers are not albinos. The natural color variation occurs because of an extremely rare double recessive gene. They possess all of the typical pigmentation. The only difference is that they have white fur instead of traditional orange-and-black Detroit Tiger fur.
"Marcan" refers to Dr. Josip Marcan, the foremost tiger expert in the world. As a young man he earned veterinarian credentials studying at the renowned Frankfurt Zoo in Germany.
Dr. Marcan's positive reinforcement training methods even earned him an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.