The Circus Blog

Posted By thecircusblog on May 8, 2012

Roy Kabat along with his wife Marie became the new owners of Jungleland. The Kabats and their partner Tex Scarborough purchased Jungleland for two point four million dollars in 1963. Things went quite well for Jungleland for a couple of seasons.  The competition of other animal compounds that also had movie animal rentals started to hurt Jungleland’s profits. Jungleland had a large inventory of animals, and as you can imagine they were very expensive to care for and feed. In 1966 it was became necessary to sell off some of the animals. Tex Scarborough was taking a group of Japanese buyers, interested in lions and tigers through the compound. Tex escorted them to the main arena where all the cats were kept. It was feeding time and at the far end of the string of cat cages the attendants were feeding large chunks of horse meat. All the cats were excited while waiting their turn to be fed. Tex noticed that his shoe lace needed to be tied. He lifted his foot up near the flap cleaning door which also was where the meat is pushed through. A lion pulled his foot into the cage through that door and Tex lost his foot. There was nothing anyone could do but get him to the hospital. The attack caused him to walk on crutches the rest of his life. It seemed from that day on things went down hill for the compound and of course insurance companies took a long hard look at Jungleland. We all have to remember that “wild animals are trained not tamed.”

This is a little known fact. The lion above with Roy Kabat is the one that mauled Zolton Hargity

This lion was also known as Major, Leo, or Tony. It just depended what show or movie he was performing in.

Categories: JungleLand Compound
Tags: