If You Keep Pet Lions, They May Kill You Too

Two mastiffs at the home of actor Ving Rhames may have mauled a 40-year-old man to death. The body was found on the actor's front lawn in Brentwood, California, and the dogs were two of four Fila Brasileiro mastiffs at the house.

According to an interview the actor gave in 2001, he has eight of these massive dogs that were once reportedly used to track slaves and fugitives.

An investigation is under way to see if the groundskeeper (who also took care of the dogs) might have died from a heart attack while being mauled or if the bite wounds themselves were the cause of death. The victims's body is reported to have been covered in bite wounds.

More to be revealed later, no doubt.

This is tragedy any way you cut it -- for the poor unfortunate groundskeeper on the lawn (a man still without a name in the news accounts), for Mr. Rhames (who was not present when the attack occured), for the dogs (who will no doubt be killed, if they have not already), for Brentwood (which, after O.J., needed this publicity like a hole in the head), for large molosser breeds of dogs in general (such as pit bulls) and even for black Americans (as this comes so close on the heels of the Michael Vick dog fighting story which will no doubt color the Rhames case).

And yet, was it not predictable? Not necessarily in this situation, of course, but in some situation, some time? Dogs are pack animals and will "fire off" on occassions, and sometimes in an unexpected manner and for reasons that are a mystery to humans. This is true for all animals, I think. Human are no exception -- look at how many people are murdered by humans. Meanwhile, over in Las Vegas, Siegfried and Roy are still trying to figure out why Montecore, their pet white tiger, which they hand-raised from birth, fired off and almost killed Roy.

And yet, isn't it predicatable? Is there anyone who has had a parrot, dog, cat, hawk , ferret, or gerbil, who has not been bitten sometime?

Of course birds, small dogs and rodents are not likely to kill you. It's a simple matter of size. But if you put a tiger or a Fila Brasileiro mastiff in the equation -- or several of them, as in this case -- the scales can swing rapidly in a different direction.

You have the other issue too, of course: the Nature of the Beast. As I wrote on this blog earlier this year in a piece entitled "What the Hell is an American Staffordshire Terrier?,"

"[O]owners of these dogs will tell you they have worked hard to breed all aggression and prey drive out of their charges. And no doubt many have. What a comical thing that is, of course -- a bit like an auto club bragging that their sport cars have no engines. The only thing is .... it's not always true. 'Bad breeding' and 'poor socialization' are often blamed when dogs descended from pit and catch dogs attack small children, but ... could it be .... perhaps ... that a small bit of genetic code remains unbraided as well? It is certainly in the realm of possibility, is it not?"

In an earlier post, I have written about how odd it is that black Americans are embracing redneck culture in the form of pit fighting dogs.

Perhaps the ultimate extension of this, of course, is to own a dog that was designed to capture and kill escaping slaves. As Ving Rhames himself told The Los Angeles Times in an 1999 interview which featured a 170-pound Fila by the name of Kong (picture at top):

“'The dog was actually bred to guard slaves,' Rhames said. 'It was the only dog they found that had the temperament to guard a slave. It could be around you every day, but if you tried to run away, it would deal with you like it never saw you before.'"

That's a quote that's likely to be heard again ... in court.

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