The Tiger Trainer Who Lived for Danger
For Charles W. Miller, a veteran animal trainer at the Bostock Zoo in Tacoma, the daily threat of being mauled by a 800-pound tiger was simply just another day at the office.
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Charles W. Miller ran away from home at age 10 to join a circus, eventually graduating from ponies to man-eating lions. Now working at the Bostock zoo in Tacoma, Miller faces four tigers, including the particularly vicious 800-pound 'Depew.' During a recent performance, Depew attacked the trainer, tearing his boots, but Miller continued the act after firing blank shots at the animal. Miller, who has been gashed by the tigers before and denied accident insurance due to the peril of his trade, remains undeterred. 'I don't know anything else,' he says. 'It's my trade, the same as the man who works at the lathe in a machine shop.'
“I have tried to find one good point about a tiger but so far it has been in vain.”
While traveling circuses and zoos are no longer the cultural centerpieces they once were, the occupational hazards Miller faced highlight a time when 'dangerous work' often meant direct, physical confrontation with nature. His struggle to secure insurance coverage and enter lodges due to his profession reflects the era's rigid social structures toward those whose lives existed outside conventional, 'respectable' white-collar labor.
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