The G.W. Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, which was explored in Netflix’s impossibly popular docu-series, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, has been closed for the past several weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This weekend saw Oklahoma lift their stay-at-home restrictions, and of course, hundreds of people who have been cooped up in their dwellings, immersed in the chaotic kingdom of Joe Exotic, flocked to the zoo, now called Tiger King Park.
The infamous park was given clearance to reopen granted workers and visitors all abided by the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions sanitation and social distancing protocols. Unsurprisingly, the three brain cells shared between hundreds of bodies were not capable of adhering to such guidelines.
Photos taken by Daily Mail show nearly all visitors ignoring the instructions by not wearing masks and ignoring social-distancing by crowding together to observe the park’s lions and tigers. Employees of the park also neglected the rules, photos show head zookeeper Erik Cowie and the zoo’s new owner Jeff Lowe — who both feature in the series— ignoring the rules. Cowie evidently believes that the 1.5 metre distancing doesn’t apply to those presenting animals, whilst photos of Lowe and his wife Lauren were papped greeting guest entering the park. If Tiger King Park opening is a catalyst for a spike in coronavirus cases I’m boiling it down to Darwinism, baby.
In other Tiger King news, because that’s all anybody seems to give a shit about nowadays, Joe Exotic is set to ask President Trump for a formal pardon.
Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, is currently serving a 22-year sentence in Federal prison for charges including animal abuse and murder for hire.
As TMZ report Exotic’s legal team is “preparing a case file that will be sent on to Trump”, alleging that Exotic was wrongly convicted for the plot to kill animal rights activist Carole Baskin.
Earlier this week it was revealed that Nicholas Cage would take on the role of Exotic in a forthcoming television series directed by Dan Lagana, co-creator and showrunner of the Netflix mockumentary American Vandal.
