He had 200 tigers, was married to two men at the same time, loved the sequins, was tattooed over the whole body and had gotten so many new face, that he, according to a staff member and asked her to pick his sideburns, because they started behind the ears.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, when one has to describe one of the most talked about and controversial people: Joe Exotic. Aka The Tiger King.
the Series about him is p.t. the second most-watched on Netflix, and although corona and our enforced quarantine surely has helped it in a good way, it is not the only reason for the success.
For as the Los Angeles Times writes: ‘How could a documentary containing exotic animals, polygamy, weapons, mordkonspirationer and piercings in the genital region to become the second.’
How crazy of a story it is, should not be disclosed here. But who is he, the eccentric and bizarre character with the bleached hair and amusing appearance, which is the show’s 57-year-old the focal point?
Him, which right now sits behind bars in a prison in Oklahoma and is serving a sentence of 22 years for 17 cases of animal cruelty, including to have shot five tigers, and two times having tried to hire a hit man?
He was born on a farm in Kansas – with the not-so-bite-sized surname Schreibvogel. There, among the cows, horses, chickens, cats and dogs, he grew up as the middle child of five in a family of German descent.
Although it sounds idyllic, he has described his parents as ‘cold’ and ‘numb’. Something of what he remembers best is that he always felt more like offering spacious, elegant and part-time worker than as the son of the house.
And that he at the age of five years several times was raped by an older boy. In his home.
But Joe was also a boy, who loved animals and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. Although his approach to it was pretty special. According to New York Magazine he shot namely sparrows, which he brought home for curing.
It was not only in that area, that he stood out. For already at a very young age he knew that he was to the boys, and was with his otherness an easy victim for the skolekammeraternes brutal bullying.
But then – as later in his life – he was capable of.
“They touched me, never again. Never,” he says to New York Magazine about his revenge, went out to sprinkle some tagsøm out of the school car park. With the result that several hundred tires punctured.
Should he even put it into words, which event that was life-changing for him – the rebirth he calls it himself – and laid the foundations for Joe Exotic, he points to it on a night out in 1985.
Joe Schreibvogel, who was 22 years old, had been talking to a post as sheriff for the 503 souls in the little village Eastvale in Texas.
There, he lived together with his girlfriend, Kim. A pigekæreste. At the same time he was secretly frequent guest on Dallas’ bøssebarer, and the shame of dobbeltlivet was about to eat him up.
He sat in his patrol car, stepped on the throttle and drove straight into a concrete block. Would take his own life.
As you know, dead Joe Schreibvogel not. But he broke his back. And jumped out.
He was sent to a rehabilitation center. The neighbor was a pet shop, and the proprietor had a friend who worked in a safari park, and often took a small lion’s whelp with the home. As Joe was allowed to cuddle.
“The small creature gathered myself together again,” he has told about his meeting with kattedyrene. And thus was the germ of Joe Exotic, the Tiger King, planted.
Even though former school mates and family, according to New York Magazine can’t recognize many of the stories, as Joe Exotic has told about his past, was the way paved for what years later would be to the G. W. Zoo, Tiger Kings walled kingdom.
This kingdom, which you can follow in the series, and which, in addition to houses several endangered species, was home and workplace for people who were discarded by society. The outcasts.
People, which, according to the Tiger King had the chance for a meaningful life to ‘saving endangered animals’.
It was here, he became more and more eccentric.
It was here, he begat not just the tigers and lions, but also ligre and tigoner, hybrids of, respectively, a hanløve and tigress, and vice versa. Thus he was assured of a constant stream of small cute cats, could provide income in the store.
well, until a feud with the deadly enemy, dyreaktivisten Carole Baskin, put a stop to everything. And sent him behind bars.
Here is Joe Exotic, the Tiger King, now. Jubilant happy about the show’s success. And, not least, his own fame.
“He’s thrilled,” as the show’s director, says for the LA Times.
