SIEGFRIED & ROY SHOWCASE BRAND NEW BABY TIGER CUBS & FIRST EVER PHOTOS OF ROY FEEDING HIS BELOVED FULL-GROWN TIGERS
These exclusive photos of a very special moment at Siegfried & Roy’s Jungle Palace home are priceless and poignant. They say a photo is worth a thousand words and the sequence of Roy feeding his fully grown tigers speak volumes.
This very private collection is simultaneously joyful and heart-tugging and shows the extraordinary love the injured illusionist has for his animals.
It happened shortly after a small privileged handpicked group of media members had watched Siegfried & Roy introduce their five new baby tiger cubs that went on show this weekend at their Secret Garden attraction at The Mirage.
I was invited to stay on and chat with the magicians after everybody else left. Roy moved over to the glass wall with its safety-gaps on the enclosed sun-lounge in their garden and I grabbed my camera as the tigers nuzzled up to him. It was amazing. You not only could see the love they had for each other, but you could sense it and feel it. He stood there for 10 minutes talking gently to them and feeding them. It was stunning and one of the most moving experiences of my life.
Mirage president Scott Sibella also privately gifted Siegfried & Roy with a framed photo of them with the new tiger cubs.
He told me, “I wanted them to have a keep-sake of them at just a month old. They grow so quickly so this will serve as a memory of when they were tiny. This is an incredible addition to our Secret garden at the resort. It’s already a very successful exhibit with thousands of visitors every week, this adds a new and exciting addition to the attraction. We are proud to have Siegfried & Roy still with us at The Mirage. Roy often comes down to the Garden as part of his recovery rehabilitation to be with the animals and meet the fans there. It’s awesome to watch them all interacting.”
There was a double reason to celebrate! Siegfried was celebrating his 69th birthday and Roy had just returned three weeks earlier from a successful knee operation in Austria to enable him to walk easier and in less pain! Siegfried explained, “He wants to be with the animals more because they help him. He’s now in the healing process and won’t have that pain in his knees so much.
As Roy played with the baby cubs Siegfried brought one over and talked to me about progress and promises, “You couldn’t ask for a better birthday present. Look at the smile on Roy’s face as he plays with them. This is the best rehab for him and more than I can ask for. It gives him a positive reason to get up every morning. He feeds them a bottle and gets them comfortable for the day. They get a bottle and some meat every three hours. Four are females, two are the rare white tigers and two are striped white tigers and the male, who is golden has become the leader already. Roy has named him Svengali since he’s a womanizer and has got the four girls around him to hold court!”
Roy though already has one favorite. He told me he’d named the tiger cub that spent the most time with him Shacrat, which is the translation of “center core,” which he said explained the state of his strength, his will, his determination and well being. “It comes right from the center of my being,” he said and even wrote the name down to ensure I got the spelling correct! Even he admitted, “It is the best rehab.” Siegfried added, “You can describe her as a precious princess because its definitely Daddy’s little girl.” They said the five cubs had tripled in size in the three weeks they’d been caring for them at Jungle Palace to their current 15 pounds. Local Clark County school children will participate in a contest later to name the others.
It was back on Oct. 3, 2003 that Roy was severely injured when his big tiger Montecore dragged him off-stage. He ordered his rescuers not to harm Montecore before losing consciousness. Doctors reported that he “died” three times during the life-saving surgery. Roy baffled them with his recovery and on-going progress. Siegfried explained to me, “It is an amazing thing. After the accident happened Roy always wanted to go to the Secret garden and be with the animals. When we went there you could see with his body language, with his face that he was in a different world. You could see the healing process. The first thing was the most amazing. Tara, our snow-white tiger 25 years ago, she was closing to saying goodbye. We took her over to Roy, who at that point hadn’t yet stood after the operations. But when Tara came to him he did stand up. We told him ‘no you can’t stand,’ but he said he had to. They stood up for us for 25 years and he said he now had to stand up for them.”
“When Roy was first in the hospital we obviously couldn’t get tigers and lions in there but we did get dogs in. There’s a company that brings animals in the hospitals to help patients recover. It’s the same thing that just happened in Austria. One day after the operation he went to see the Lipizzaner horses and it just so happened there was a newborn there that couldn’t even stand on his legs. But a miracle because the young one managed to walk up right to Roy that was more amazing. The new tigers have also changed him tremendously in the last six weeks.”
Now he and Siegfried have promised my friends at our annual Keep Memory Alive benefit for the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute being built downtown that they will make a comeback with “a moment of magic” once again early next year.
Siegfried told me, “When we make a promise we keep it. Everybody said we couldn’t do it but we will and we are getting ready for it. I can’t tell you how excited we both are planning this. It’s a wonderful new target for Roy to achieve and he is really up for it now. He’s had the knee surgery so he will be able to complete the full 5K walk for the Opportunity Village Santa Claus project in early December. Meantime, we will be going to the warehouse to go through the illusions to see what we will do next February for the gala. We are going to appear, whatever it takes, and this event today creates a lot more awareness for it in advance. We are very happy to perform again because it is for a good cause. We are creating awareness for Alzheimers and Parkinson’s. I think when we are connected with it they will do even better, that is our life and we are in a position in our life where we can give something back to the community.
“These tigers are the perfect species. We picked the ones that suit to our bloodline so we are not inbreeding. They fit perfectly into our family of tigers. I don’t want to say if they will join us for that appearance, but we will do what the time will tell us.”