Are American parents too protective? Or is one particular Russian sort of cultural coming-of-a-not-very-old-age ritual absolutely crazy?<\/p>\n
If you didn’t read Andrew Kramer’s “Step Right Up, Kids, the Predator Is Ready”<\/a> in yesterday’s New York Times, you might want to. To provoke your interest, here are the first two paragraphs [and if you link to this story, you’ll see a really scary picture of (1) a spectacularly beautiful Siberian tiger named Chanel and (2) a very little child, sitting right next to (1)]:<\/p>\n MOSCOW \u2014 The father knelt beside his hesitant daughter and gently encouraged her to set aside her fears and take a seat.<\/em><\/p>\n “Don’t worry,” he whispered in her ear, during a family outing to the circus, “it’s just a little kitty.”<\/em><\/p>\n But in fact, lounging on a low pedestal in the foyer of the Nikulin Circus in Moscow, and lazily twitching a long, tawny tail, the tigress named Chanel was no kitty at all.<\/em><\/p>\n So you do want to read the whole story, which \u2014 thankfully! \u2014 ends thusly:<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Anya, a 6-year-old with a white bow in her hair, stood at the edge of Chanel\u2019s small roped enclosure. She looked at the tiger, then looked up at her mother and said, \u201cI\u2019m afraid.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n The mother, Yulia M. Baranova, decided not to take the picture. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe looked at her teeth, we looked at her claws,\u201d she said, and moved on to the stands offering cotton candy, vampire teeth and yo-yos. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are American parents too protective? Or is one particular Russian sort of cultural coming-of-a-not-very-old-age ritual absolutely crazy? If you didn’t read Andrew Kramer’s “Step Right Up, Kids, the Predator Is Ready” in yesterday’s New York Times, you might want to. … Continue reading