White Magic

The white tiger is God's loneliest creature. Idolized at a distance, it has been inbred into a lifetime of captivity where it lives a totally exploited existence, forever homeless. A pawn of what activist Tim Harrison calls "CONservationists," the white tiger came to America as a Bengal oddity - one of perhaps seven anywhere. Mohini was the offspring of parents carrying the same gene that produced the white color, an anomaly occurring once in ten thousand births. When she arrived at the Washington, D.C., zoo in 1960, she was a media sensation. Her appearance captured the country's imagination and her offspring ended up with Vegas showmen Siegfried and Roy, creating a breeding binge - all inbred and susceptible to genetic deformities. On the frontlines as America's leading activist for federal legislation to stop ownership of exotic animals, Harrison poignantly explains the impossibility of properly caring for most exotic animals, as well as the inherent dangers. White Magic documents the disastrous underground culture of exploitation that has doomed the white tiger's very existence.