The Strange and Dangerous World of America’s Big Cat People
You can listen to our four-part “Cat People” podcast series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
您可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或任何可以获得播客的地方收听我们的四部分“Cat People”播客系列。
It’s a gloomy April afternoon in rural Oklahoma, and I’m sitting on the floor of a fluorescent-lit room at a roadside zoo with Nova, a 12-week-old tiliger.
那是俄克拉荷马州乡村一个阴沉的四月下午，我和 12 周大的虎诺瓦 (Nova) 一起坐在路边动物园一间荧光灯照明的房间的地板上。
She looks like a tiger cub, but she’s actually a crossbreed, an unnatural combination of a tiger father and a mother born of a tiger and a lion.
她看起来像一只老虎幼崽，但实际上是一个杂交品种，是虎父和虎母的非自然组合，是老虎和狮子所生的。
That unique genetic makeup places a higher price tag on cubs like Nova, and makes it easier, legally speaking, to abuse and exploit them.
这种独特的基因构成给像诺瓦这样的幼崽贴上了更高的价格标签，从法律上讲，也让它们更容易被虐待和剥削。
Endangered species protections don’t apply to artificial breeds such as tiligers.
濒危物种保护不适用于虎虎等人工品种。
Hybridization, however, has done nothing to quell Nova’s predatory instincts.
然而，杂交并没有平息诺瓦的掠夺本能。
For the umpteenth time during the past six minutes, she lunges at my face, claws splayed and mouth ajar — only to be halted mid-leap as her handler jerks her harness.
在过去的六分钟里，她无数次冲向我的脸，爪子张开，嘴巴张开——但在她的训练员猛拉她的安全带时，她在跳跃中停了下来。
Unphased, Nova gets right back to pouncing.
诺瓦一发不可收拾，立即开始猛扑。
With her dusty blue eyes, sherbet-colored paws, and prominent black stripes, Nova is adorable.
诺娃有着灰蓝色的眼睛、果子露色的爪子和显眼的黑色条纹，非常可爱。
But she also weighs 30 pounds and has teeth like a Doberman’s and claws the size of jumbo shrimp.
但她的体重也有 30 磅，牙齿像杜宾犬，爪子像大虾一样大。
Nova’s handler, a woman with long brown hair who tells me she recently retired from her IT job at a South Dakota bank to live out her dream of working with exotic cats, scolds the rambunctious tiliger in a goo-goo-ga-ga voice: “Nooooo, nooooo, you calms down!” Nova is teething, the handler explains, so she just wants something to chew on.
Nova 的管理员是一位棕色长发的女士，她告诉我，她最近从南达科他州一家银行的 IT 工作退休，去实现与异国猫一起工作的梦想，她用咕咕嘎嘎的声音斥责这只粗暴的虎虎：“不，不，你冷静点！”饲养员解释说，诺瓦正在长牙，所以她只是想要一些可以咀嚼的东西。
The handler reaches for one of the tatty stuffed animals strewn around the room — a substitute, I guess, for my limbs.
训练员伸手去拿房间里散落的破烂毛绒玩具之一——我猜，这是我四肢的替代品。
In that moment of distraction, Nova lunges.
就在那个分心的时刻，诺瓦猛冲过去。
She lands her mark, chomping into the bicep of my producer, Graham Lee Brewer.
她成功了，咬住了我的制片人格雷厄姆·李·布鲁尔的二头肌。
“Ooo, she got me!” Lee Brewer grimaces as he attempts to pull away from the determined predator.
“噢，她抓住了我！”李·布鲁尔（Lee Brewer）扮了个鬼脸，试图摆脱顽固的掠食者。
Nova’s handler has to pry the tiliger’s jaws open to detach her.
诺娃的驯养员必须撬开虎虎的下巴才能将她分开。
After the incident, the woman conveniently checks her watch: “OK, you guys, time is up!”
事后，女子随手看了看手表：“好了，你们，时间到了！”
I paid $80 for the pleasure of spending 12 minutes with Nova, but I’m glad the experience, billed as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, is over.
我花了 80 美元来享受与 Nova 共度 12 分钟的乐趣，但我很高兴这段被宣传为千载难逢的机会的经历结束了。
On our way out, we pass more than a dozen adult tigers yowling and pacing cages the size of small classrooms.
出去的路上，我们经过了十几只成年老虎，它们在小教室大小的笼子里嚎叫着、踱来踱去。
Nearby signs solicit donations.
附近有募捐的标牌。
You are their only hope.
你是他们唯一的希望。
Sponsor a cabin or compound today!
今天就赞助一间小屋或大院吧！
In the safety of our car, Lee Brewer rolls up his sleeve, exposing a swollen red welt.
在我们安全的车里，李·布鲁尔卷起袖子，露出一条肿胀的红色伤痕。
“Look at my gnarly tiger bite,” he chuckles.
“看看我那粗糙的老虎咬伤，”他笑着说。
“I tried to play it off but I was like, this fuckin’ hurts!”
“我试图逃避，但我想，这他妈的太疼了！”
It’s not the first time I’ve seen this world up-close; I spent the better part of eight years investigating wildlife trafficking around the world.
这不是我第一次近距离观察这个世界；我花了八年的大部分时间调查世界各地的野生动物贩运活动。
During my travels, I visited farms in China and Laos where tigers are raised like pigs, examined traditional medicine in Vietnam, ate what I was told was tiger bone “cake,” and tracked some of the world’s last remaining wild tigers in India.
在我的旅行中，我参观了中国和老挝的农场，那里像猪一样饲养老虎，在越南检查了传统医学，吃了据说是虎骨“蛋糕”的东西，并在印度追踪了世界上仅存的一些野生老虎。
Almost everywhere I went, tigers were suffering and their numbers were on the decline because of human behavior.
几乎在我去过的所有地方，老虎都在遭受苦难，而且由于人类行为，它们的数量正在下降。
Until recently, though, I had no idea the United States was part of the problem.
但直到最近，我还不知道美国是问题的一部分。
Within a few weeks of my visit, Nova will be far too big and dangerous for overpriced playtime sessions.
在我访问后的几周内，新星对于价格过高的游戏时间来说将变得太大和危险。
Cats like her are most likely confined to one of those cramped cages my producer and I passed leaving the zoo, where they spend the rest of their life being speed-bred to crank out more adorable cubs.
像她这样的猫很可能被关在我和制片人离开动物园时经过的狭窄笼子里，它们在那里度过余生，进行快速繁殖，以培育出更可爱的幼崽。
Or Nova might be sold to another breeder, or to someone who wants to keep her as a pet.
或者诺瓦可能会被卖给另一个饲养员，或者卖给想把她当作宠物的人。
Although no one tracks big cat ownership in the U.S., it’s estimated that there are likely more pet tigers in America than there are left in the wild.
尽管没有人追踪美国大型猫科动物的拥有情况，但据估计，美国的宠物老虎数量可能比野外的数量还多。
What’s more, depending on the species of cat, federal oversight is either limited or nonexistent.
更重要的是，根据猫的种类，联邦监督要么有限，要么根本不存在。
In some states, it’s easier to buy a lion — a 400-pound predatory killer — than it is to get a dog.
在一些州，买一头狮子——一种重 400 磅的掠食性杀手——比买一只狗更容易。
Animal rights activists have been pushing for decades to curb big cat ownership in this country, arguing that the industry is cruel, dangerous, and detrimental to conservation of cats in the wild.
几十年来，动物权利活动人士一直在推动限制美国大型猫科动物的饲养，他们认为该行业残忍、危险，不利于野生猫科动物的保护。
Now, reform appears within reach.
现在，改革似乎触手可及。
The movement owes its momentum to, of all things, a murder-for-hire plot gone terribly awry.
这场运动的动力主要归功于一场严重出错的雇佣谋杀阴谋。
You might have seen the headlines in the Washington Post and New York magazine: Joe Exotic, a self-described “gay, gun-carrying redneck with a mullet,” among the largest tiger owners and breeders in the U.S., charged with conspiring to commit murder for hire.
你可能看过《华盛顿邮报》和《纽约》杂志的头条新闻：乔·异国情调（Joe Exotic），一个自称“同性恋、持枪、鲻鱼的乡巴佬”，是美国最大的老虎饲养者和饲养者之一，被指控密谋雇佣谋杀。
At its height, Joe’s zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, which is where I visited Nova, housed more than 200 big cats, including lion-tiger hybrids, as well as about 60 other species, everything from lemurs to owls to giraffes.
我访问诺瓦的地方是俄克拉荷马州温尼伍德的乔动物园，在鼎盛时期，这里饲养着 200 多只大型猫科动物，其中包括狮虎杂交种，以及大约 60 种其他物种，从狐猴到猫头鹰再到长颈鹿。
Joe even acquired a pair of alligators he claimed were once owned by Michael Jackson.
乔甚至还买了一对他声称曾经属于迈克尔·杰克逊的鳄鱼。
Still, as one local told me, “The animals weren’t the entertainment.
尽管如此，正如一位当地人告诉我的那样，“动物并不是娱乐。
Joe was the entertainment.”
乔是一种娱乐。”
Last year, an Oklahoma City jury convicted Joe, whose legal name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, of the murder-for-hire plots against a Florida activist and sanctuary owner named Carole Baskin.
去年，俄克拉荷马城陪审团判定乔（其法定姓名为约瑟夫·马尔多纳多-帕萨奇）犯有针对佛罗里达州活动家兼庇护所所有者卡罗尔·巴斯金的雇佣谋杀阴谋。
For Joe, Baskin had become something of an arch tiger rival.
对于乔来说，巴斯金已经成为了老虎的劲敌。
The news coverage mostly focused on Joe’s outlandish personality and the details of his decade-long feud with Baskin.
新闻报道主要集中在乔古怪的个性以及他与巴斯金长达十年的不和的细节上。
But the jury also found Joe guilty of 17 wildlife crimes, including illegally killing five tigers and trafficking tigers across state lines — marking the first significant conviction of a tiger criminal in an American courtroom.
但陪审团还裁定乔犯有 17 项野生动物犯罪，包括非法捕杀 5 只老虎和跨州贩运老虎，这是美国法庭上首次对老虎罪犯做出重大定罪。
“This verdict sends a shot across the bow to other roadside zoos who are playing fast and loose with federal regulations,” said Carney Anne Nasser, director of the animal welfare clinic at Michigan State University College of Law.
密歇根州立大学法学院动物福利诊所主任卡尼·安妮·纳赛尔表示：“这一判决对其他不遵守联邦法规的路边动物园来说是一记重拳。”
In other words, the bad boy of the big cat world might have inadvertently contributed to cleaning up the dirty industry he helped build and then exploited for much of his adult life.
换句话说，大猫世界的坏男孩可能无意中为清理他帮助建立的肮脏行业做出了贡献，然后在他成年后的大部分时间里进行了剥削。
* * *
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Big cats are easier to find than you might think.
大型猫科动物比您想象的更容易找到。
I recently struck up a conversation with the chef at my favorite sushi joint in New York City.
最近，我与纽约市我最喜欢的寿司店的厨师进行了交谈。
He asked what I’d been working on, and I filled him in on a bit of the Joe Exotic story and the big cat trade.
他问我一直在做什么，我向他讲述了乔异国情调的故事和大型猫科动物交易的一些情况。
To my surprise, he nodded along knowingly: “Oh yeah, a buddy of mine just got a serval!” Celebrity culture is another hot spot for exotic animal ownership.
令我惊讶的是，他会意地点点头：“哦，是的，我的一个朋友刚刚得到了一只薮猫！”名人文化是珍稀动物饲养的另一个热点。
This past fall, Justin Bieber reportedly spent $35,000 on two savannah cats and created a dedicated Instagram page that quickly amassed more than 500,000 followers.
据报道，去年秋天，贾斯汀·比伯 (Justin Bieber) 花了 35,000 美元买了两只萨凡纳猫，并创建了一个专门的 Instagram 页面，很快就积累了超过 500,000 名粉丝。
When PETA criticized Bieber’s new pet choice, he posted a statement on his Instagram story telling the nonprofit group to “suck it” and “focus on real problems.”
当 PETA 批评比伯的新宠物选择时，他在自己的 Instagram 故事中发表了一份声明，告诉这个非营利组织“忍住”并“关注真正的问题”。
Shopping for an unconventional animal used to mean scanning the classified sections of newspapers or fliers on the cluttered billboards at grocery stores and gas stations.
过去，购买非传统动物意味着扫描报纸的分类部分或杂货店和加油站杂乱的广告牌上的传单。
But those analog methods of sale have long since given way to people hawking large cats in ways that are now more traditionally modern: closed Facebook groups and exotic pet websites.
但这些模拟的销售方式早已让位于人们以现在更传统的现代方式兜售大型猫科动物：封闭的 Facebook 群组和外来宠物网站。
Getting an ocelot or a cheetah can be as easy as sending a DM or text, agreeing on a price, and setting a pick-up date.
获取豹猫或猎豹就像发送私信或短信、商定价格并设定提货日期一样简单。
Depending on what state you live in, owning one of these animals might be entirely legal.
根据您居住的州，拥有其中一种动物可能是完全合法的。
And even if it’s not, there’s almost always a way to sidestep the rules, which can be confusing and are rarely enforced.
即使不是，也几乎总有办法绕过这些规则，而这些规则可能会令人困惑，而且很少得到执行。
Save for a handful of regulations pertaining to animals listed in the Endangered Species Act (ESA), there’s almost no oversight of big cat ownership by the federal government.
除了《濒危物种法》（ESA）中列出的一些与动物有关的法规外，联邦政府对大型猫科动物的所有权几乎没有任何监督。
The Animal Welfare Act is supposed to ensure humane treatment of big cats and other captive animals, but the inspectors are overworked and many of the rules are weak, vague, or both.
《动物福利法》本应确保对大型猫科动物和其他圈养动物的人道待遇，但检查人员过度劳累，而且许多规则薄弱、模糊，或两者兼而有之。
Although the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) does technically require a permit to sell endangered species such as tigers, lions, leopards, or jaguars across state lines, unscrupulous sellers and buyers often don’t want to bother with permits and deal in untraceable cash payments.
尽管从技术上讲，鱼类和野生动物管理局 (FWS) 确实需要获得许可证才能跨州出售老虎、狮子、豹子或美洲虎等濒危物种，但不择手段的卖家和买家往往不想麻烦许可证并进行无法追踪的现金付款。
At trial, one buyer even testified to participating in sales marked as “donations.” Joe Exotic used this tactic for years to evade the gaze of law enforcement.
在审判中，一名买家甚至作证参与了标记为“捐赠”的销售。乔·异国情调多年来一直使用这种策略来逃避执法部门的目光。
He wasn’t the only one.
他不是唯一一个。
At Joe’s trial, that same tiger owner testified: “Everybody marks donation.”
在乔的审判中，同一位老虎主人作证说：“每个人都标记捐赠。”
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每周五早上，将由 Longreads 编辑精心挑选和介绍的本周最佳读物发送到您的收件箱，开始您的周末。
Same goes for regulations at the state level: Loopholes abound in the legislative patchwork governing big cat ownership.
州一级的法规也是如此：管理大型猫科动物所有权的立法漏洞百出。
“There’s lots of ways tigers have been technically regulated on paper but in practice, not so much,” Nasser said.
纳赛尔说：“书面上对老虎进行技术监管的方式有很多，但实际上却没有那么多。”
Roughly two thirds of states have some sort of regulations prohibiting private big cat ownership as pets.
大约三分之二的州制定了某种法规，禁止私人饲养大型猫科动物作为宠物。
In 10 states, anyone can own a lion or tiger as long as they pay as little as $30 for a license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
在 10 个州，任何人都可以拥有狮子或老虎，只要支付 30 美元即可获得美国农业部 (USDA) 颁发的许可证。
Four states — North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Oklahoma — have no laws on the books at all.
北卡罗来纳州、威斯康星州、内华达州和俄克拉荷马州这四个州根本没有书面法律。
Rules aside, very few people, no matter how well-intentioned, are prepared to own one of the world’s largest, deadliest predators.
抛开规则不谈，无论意图多么善意，很少有人愿意拥有世界上最大、最致命的掠食者之一。
“Everybody wants a tiger cub, but nobody wants a tiger,” said Tim Harrison, a retired Ohio police officer and first responder who specialized in exotic creatures.
“每个人都想要一只老虎幼崽，但没有人想要一只老虎，”俄亥俄州退休警官、专门研究外来生物的急救人员蒂姆·哈里森说。
These days, Harrison runs Outreach for Animals, a nonprofit that advocates responsible exotic pet ownership and trains emergency personnel to safely deal with animal-related crises.
如今，哈里森经营着“Outreach for Animals”，这是一个非营利组织，提倡负责任地饲养外来宠物，并培训应急人员安全处理与动物有关的危机。
Harrison used to be a big cat owner himself, before realizing his mistake.
哈里森本人曾经是一位大猫主人，后来才意识到自己的错误。
“I was on the dark side,” he said, “thinking I was doing the right thing.”
“我站在黑暗面，”他说，“认为我做的是正确的事。”
Many big cat owners are subjected to what Harrison describes as a “baptism in reality,” learning firsthand that these adult cats are expensive and dangerous.
许多大型猫科动物的主人都经历了哈里森所说的“现实的洗礼”，直接了解到这些成年猫既昂贵又危险。
“A big cat is like a walking, thinking IED,” he said.
“一只大猫就像一个会走路、会思考的简易爆炸装置，”他说。
“You don’t know when that thing’s going to go off.” One of the most famous incidents took place in 2003 at a live performance by the popular entertainment act Siegfried and Roy.
“你不知道那件事什么时候会发生。”最著名的事件之一发生在 2003 年流行娱乐表演齐格弗里德和罗伊的现场表演中。
One of the duo’s iconic white tigers, Mantacore, knocked down Roy Horn, grabbed him by the neck, and dragged him away.
两人标志性的白虎之一曼塔科雷（Mantacore）击倒了罗伊·霍恩（Roy Horn），抓住他的脖子，将他拖走。
First responders rushed Horn to the hospital in critical condition.
急救人员将霍恩送往医院，情况危急。
He survived but only returned to the stage once more years later.
他幸存下来，但几年后才再次回到舞台。
Defenders of the popular act contended that Horn suffered a stroke mid-act and Mantacore was just trying to help him, but Harrison disagreed.
这一流行表演的捍卫者声称霍恩在表演中途中风，而蝠鲼只是想帮助他，但哈里森不同意。
He argued on national television that Mantacore had intended to kill Roy, and that Roy had brought this upon himself: He’d disrespected the largest predatory cat in the world by forcing the animal to do magic tricks.
他在国家电视台上辩称，蝠鲼本来打算杀死罗伊，而这一切都是罗伊自找的：他强迫世界上最大的掠食性猫科动物表演魔术，这是对它的不尊重。
No agency tracks the number of people attacked and killed by captive big cats.
没有机构追踪被圈养大型猫科动物袭击和杀害的人数。
According to a database of incidents compiled by the Humane Society of the United States, 24 people have died and 294 have been injured in the U.S. since 1990.
根据美国人道协会编制的事件数据库，自 1990 年以来，美国已有 24 人死亡、294 人受伤。
Those figures likely only represent a fraction of the real numbers.
这些数字可能只代表真实数字的一小部分。
Not every case makes the news, and the people involved in these incidents don’t always divulge the true cause of injury.
并非所有案件都会成为新闻，参与这些事件的人并不总是透露受伤的真正原因。
In 1999, when a family’s pet tiger killed a 10-year-old girl in Texas, the victim’s mother initially told emergency dispatchers that her daughter had cut her neck by falling off a fence.
1999年，德克萨斯州一个家庭的宠物老虎杀死了一名10岁女孩，受害者的母亲最初告诉紧急调度员，她的女儿从栅栏上摔下来，割伤了脖子。
(She’d later testify she did not recall making the phone call.) In 2003, a man in New York City visited the hospital for a severe wound on his arm and leg; he claimed to have been bitten by a pit bull — not by Ming, the 400-pound tiger he had holed up in his Harlem apartment.
（她后来作证说她不记得打过电话。） 2003 年，纽约市的一名男子因手臂和腿部严重受伤而去医院；他声称自己是被斗牛犬咬伤的，而不是被他躲在哈林区公寓里的那只重 400 磅的老虎 Ming 咬伤的。
Big cats can threaten more than just their owners.
大型猫科动物威胁的不仅仅是它们的主人。
The most infamous example occurred in 2011, when exotic animal owner Terry Thompson opened the doors to almost all of his pets’ cages before shooting himself.
最臭名昭著的例子发生在 2011 年，当时珍奇动物主人特里·汤普森 (Terry Thompson) 在开枪自杀之前打开了几乎所有宠物笼子的门。
In what came to be known as the Zanesville massacre, law enforcement officers had to hunt and kill 18 tigers, 17 lions, and three mountain lions, as well as bears, a baboon, and wolves.
在后来被称为曾斯维尔大屠杀的事件中，执法人员必须猎杀 18 只老虎、17 只狮子和 3 只美洲狮，以及熊、一只狒狒和狼。
“It was like Jumanji in real life,” said Harrison, who was one of the two dozen or so officers who responded to the incident.
“这就像现实生活中的勇敢者游戏，”哈里森说，他是对这一事件做出反应的大约两打警官之一。
Many of the people who responded to the call that day suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, Harrison claimed.
哈里森声称，当天响应电话的许多人都患有创伤后应激障碍。
They had no choice but to kill the animals, then they faced virulent public backlash for doing so.
他们别无选择，只能杀死这些动物，然后他们的做法遭到了公众的强烈反对。
Zanesville is an extreme example, but it’s not the only case of exotics turned loose.
曾斯维尔是一个极端的例子，但这并不是唯一一个外来物种被释放的例子。
One problem is there’s a lack of places equipped to take in these animals — even zoos don’t want them.
一个问题是缺乏足够的设施来容纳这些动物——甚至连动物园也不想收它们。
Since starring in a 2011 documentary The Elephant in the Living Room, about exotic cat ownership, Harrison gets about 30 calls a year from people desperate to find a new home for their lions or tigers.
自从 2011 年主演一部关于珍奇猫科动物的纪录片《客厅里的大象》以来，哈里森每年都会接到大约 30 个电话，人们迫切希望为自己的狮子或老虎找到一个新家。
With few options, some people donate their cats to shady facilities that use them for breeding.
由于没有什么选择，一些人将自己的猫捐给了阴暗的设施，用于繁殖。
Others abandon them.
其他人抛弃他们。
The New York Times recently reported that a woman looking for a place to smoke a joint stumbled upon a caged tiger in a vacant home in Houston.
《纽约时报》最近报道称，一名妇女在休斯敦一所空置的房屋中寻找地方抽烟时偶然发现了一只关在笼子里的老虎。
Unsurprisingly, the owner did not immediately come forward to claim the tiger, but she was later arrested and charged with one misdemeanor count of cruelty to a nonlivestock animal.
不出所料，老虎的主人没有立即出面认领这只老虎，但她后来被捕并被指控一项虐待非牲畜的轻罪。
* * *
** **
As a boy, Joe Exotic raised pigeons and captured porcupines, racoons, and baby antelope at his childhood homes in Kansas and rural Wyoming.
小时候，乔·异国情调 (Joe Exotic) 在堪萨斯州和怀俄明州乡村的童年家中饲养鸽子并捕捉豪猪、浣熊和小羚羊。
But it was the death of his older brother, Garold Wayne, in a car accident in 1997, that precipitated Joe’s entrance into the tiger business: Joe convinced his parents to use the roughly $140,000 settlement they received to open a wildlife rescue center.
但他的哥哥加罗德·韦恩 (Garold Wayne) 在 1997 年的一场车祸中去世，促使乔进入老虎行业：乔说服他的父母用他们收到的大约 14 万美元和解金开设一家野生动物救援中心。
Before Joe and his parents had completed the first cages at the GW Exotic Animal Memorial Foundation in 1999, someone dropped off an unwanted mountain lion and black bear.
1999 年，乔和他的父母在 GW 珍奇动物纪念基金会完成第一个笼子之前，有人扔下了一只不需要的山狮和黑熊。
Soon after, they received a call about two tigers, a black leopard, and a mountain lion found in a backyard.
不久之后，他们接到电话称在后院发现了两只老虎、一只黑豹和一只山狮。
Joe set out with a horse trailer and tranquilizers to collect the animals, which were skinny and malnourished.
乔带着一辆马拖车和镇静剂出发去收集那些瘦弱且营养不良的动物。
When Joe spoke to me this spring on the phone from a county jail in Oklahoma, he told me there was an excitement about the uncertainty and possibility of those early days.
今年春天，当乔在俄克拉荷马州的一所县监狱给我打电话时，他告诉我，早期的不确定性和可能性令人兴奋。
“I had no intention of being Joe Exotic or the Tiger King or anything like that,” said Joe, who came up with the “Tiger King” moniker because people struggled to pronounce his original surname, Schreibvogel.
“我无意成为乔·异国情调或虎王或类似的人，”乔说。他想出了“虎王”的绰号，因为人们很难发音他原来的姓氏施赖布沃格尔。
“But I never said no to a rescue.”
“但我从来没有拒绝过救援。”
Pretty soon, Joe started breeding his own tigers.
很快，乔开始饲养自己的老虎。
He bred some 400 big cats over the years.
多年来他饲养了大约400只大型猫科动物。
He sold the animals to buyers on both coasts for as much as $5,000 each.
他将这些动物以每只 5,000 美元的价格卖给了东西海岸的买家。
By the mid-2000s, Joe had become one of the largest exotic animal operators in the country.
到 2000 年代中期，乔已成为该国最大的外来动物经营者之一。
He owned dozens of species and put together a traveling magic show.
他拥有数十个物种，并组织了一场巡回魔术表演。
Although Joe had been “about the animals” in the beginning, as time passed, according to Joe’s ex-boyfriend John Finlay, fame and profit monopolized his thinking.
据乔的前男友约翰·芬利说，尽管乔一开始就“关心动物”，但随着时间的推移，名誉和利润垄断了他的思想。
Joe’s niece, Chealsi Putman, who helped out at the zoo for years, noticed the same evolution.
乔的侄女 Chealsi Putman 在动物园帮忙多年，也注意到了同样的演变。
“It’s like he’s seen dollar signs,” Putman told me.
“就像他看到了美元符号一样，”普特曼告诉我。
“He figured out a way to make money and ran with it.”
“他想出了一个赚钱的方法并付诸实践。”
Not all big cat owners are similarly motivated.
并非所有大型猫科动物主人都有同样的动机。
For some, it’s a grossly misplaced desire to help an endangered species — not realizing that big cats bred in the U.S. are hybridized mutts that have no genetic worth for wild tiger conservation.
对一些人来说，帮助濒危物种的愿望是完全错误的——没有意识到在美国饲养的大型猫科动物是杂交杂种，对野生老虎保护没有遗传价值。
For others, like 54-year-old Deborah Pierce, the motivation is something more akin to love, or infatuation.
对于其他人来说，比如 54 岁的黛博拉·皮尔斯 (Deborah Pierce)，动机更类似于爱情或迷恋。
Pierce started small, rehabbing injured wildlife at her house and volunteering and working at a local veterinary clinic and zoo after she graduated from high school.
皮尔斯从小开始在她家里康复受伤的野生动物，高中毕业后在当地的一家兽医诊所和动物园做志愿者和工作。
But helping lion keepers wasn’t enough to satisfy Pierce.
但帮助狮子饲养员并不足以让皮尔斯满意。
“I wanted one of my own to just spend time with,” she said.
“我想要一个和我自己一起度过时光的人，”她说。
Pierce was encouraged when she learned that at the time her home state of South Carolina had no laws preventing her from owning a big cat.
当皮尔斯得知当时她的家乡南卡罗来纳州没有法律禁止她拥有一只大猫时，她感到很受鼓舞。
She talked her husband into helping her construct a double-fenced pen on their secluded, wooded property.
她说服丈夫帮助她在他们僻静、树木繁茂的房产上建造了一个双栅栏围栏。
She easily found a dealer on the internet selling lion cubs for $1,500 — like Nova, “picture babies” that were too large for cub petting by the time of sale — and arranged to purchase a female cub.
她很容易在网上找到了一个以 1,500 美元的价格出售幼狮的经销商——就像诺瓦一样，在出售时“想象出太大的幼崽”，无法抚摸幼狮——并安排购买一只雌性幼崽。
“I could afford her easier than I could afford a new bulldog,” Pierce said.
“我买得起她比买一只新斗牛犬更容易，”皮尔斯说。
She named the lion Elsa, and a few months later, she got Charlie, a baby cougar, to keep Elsa company.
她给这只狮子取名为艾尔莎，几个月后，她又养了一只小美洲狮查理来陪伴艾尔莎。
That was 12 years ago.
那是12年前的事了。
Pierce’s perspective has since changed.
皮尔斯的观点从此发生了变化。
She’s emptied her savings account on her cats.
她把存款都花在了猫身上。
They eat $5,000 worth of meat a year and the veterinary bills run around $10,000 annually.
他们每年吃掉价值 5,000 美元的肉，每年的兽医费用约为 10,000 美元。
Last year, the county hit her with an $1,100 fine for not having the proper paperwork.
去年，该县因没有提供适当的文件而对她处以 1,100 美元的罚款。
(South Carolina started regulating big cats in 2018.) Pierce no longer has time to ride horses, her other great love, and her husband left her in 2016, breaking not only her heart, she said, but also Charlie and Elsa’s.
（南卡罗来纳州于 2018 年开始监管大型猫科动物。）皮尔斯不再有时间骑马，这是她的另一挚爱，她的丈夫于 2016 年离开了她，她说，这不仅伤了她的心，也伤了查理和艾莎的心。
She’s put a dream of moving out to Arizona on hold as well.
她也搁置了搬到亚利桑那州的梦想。
State laws there strictly regulate private ownership of big cats, and finding a sanctuary where Elsa and Charlie could stay has proven too difficult.
那里的州法律严格规范大型猫科动物的私人所有权，事实证明，为艾莎和查理找到一个可以居住的庇护所太困难了。
“They’re my best friends,” Pierce said, “but if I had it all to go over again, I wouldn’t have gotten them.”
“他们是我最好的朋友，”皮尔斯说，“但如果我能重来一遍，我就不会得到他们了。”
At this point, Pierce has resigned herself to the long haul, perhaps as many as another eight years given the lifespan of captive big cats.
此时，皮尔斯已经接受了长期的考验，考虑到圈养大型猫科动物的寿命，也许还要再等八年。
“I just want to be able to give Elsa and Charlie a happy life,” she said.
“我只是想让艾莎和查理过上幸福的生活，”她说。
“Their happiness is more important than mine, in my eyes.”
“在我看来，他们的幸福比我的幸福更重要。”
A month after I visited Pierce, she emailed with bad news.
我拜访皮尔斯一个月后，她通过电子邮件传达了坏消息。
Charlie had died in surgery.
查理在手术中去世。
“His heart was still beating, but he wouldn’t breathe when the oxygen came off,” she wrote.
“他的心脏仍在跳动，但当氧气耗尽时，他无法呼吸，”她写道。
“So, we let him slip away.” Elsa, she says, has been inconsolable, and Deb blames herself for not bringing Charlie to the vet earlier.
“所以，我们就让他溜走了。”艾莎说，她一直伤心欲绝，而黛布则责怪自己没有早点带查理去看兽医。
The bill for Charlie’s last visit, which totaled $4,800, even after the vet gave Pierce a significant discount, has only added to her stress.
即使兽医给了皮尔斯很大的折扣，查理上次就诊的账单总共还是 4,800 美元，这只会增加她的压力。
“I just hope nothing happens to Elsa before money is available again,” she says.
“我只是希望在钱再次可用之前艾莎不会发生任何事情，”她说。
“That’s my number one worry right now.”
“这是我现在最担心的事情。”
* * *
** **
The modern exotic animal craze traces back to the ’70s and ’80s and a phenomenon called zoo babies.
现代珍奇动物热潮可以追溯到 70 年代和 80 年代，一种被称为“动物园宝宝”的现象。
Each spring, interstate signs and TV commercials featured photos of blue-eyed, squealing balls of fuzz debuting at major zoos around the country, an irresistible marketing lure for families that turned out to snap photos and cuddle the newest arrivals.
每年春天，州际标志和电视广告上都会出现蓝眼睛、尖叫的绒毛球在全国各大动物园首次亮相的照片，这对前来拍照并拥抱新来者的家庭来说是一种不可抗拒的营销诱惑。
Zoo babies were among the industry’s number one moneymaking programs, and tigers were always the biggest draw.
动物园婴儿是该行业最赚钱的项目之一，而老虎始终是最大的吸引力。
As an added bonus, zoos advertised these activities under the guise of conservation.
作为额外的好处，动物园以保护为幌子宣传这些活动。
“You’d get your T-shirt, get your picture taken, and you’d walk away feeling like you’ve saved the world — you’ve saved tigers,” Harrison said.
哈里森说：“你会穿上 T 恤，拍张照片，然后离开时感觉自己拯救了世界——你拯救了老虎。”
But there was a problem, and Harrison, who worked as an exotic animal veterinary assistant as a teenager in Ohio, noticed it.
但有一个问题，青少年时期在俄亥俄州担任珍奇动物兽医助理的哈里森注意到了这个问题。
There were lots of zoo babies but no zoo adolescents.
动物园里有很多婴儿，但没有动物园青少年。
When Harrison eventually began asking the staff about what had happened to last year’s tiger cubs, he’d get vague answers about the animals being traded off to different zoos.
当哈里森最终开始向工作人员询问去年的虎崽发生了什么事时，他得到的答案含糊其辞，说这些动物被交易到了不同的动物园。
To Harrison, that math didn’t add up: Even the largest zoos around the country had only two or three adult tigers.
对哈里森来说，这个数学计算并不成立：即使是全国最大的动物园也只有两到三只成年老虎。
But zoos annually paraded hundreds of babies out for pictures and play sessions.
但动物园每年都会让数百名婴儿出去拍照和玩耍。
Harrison eventually learned the dark truth: After the cubs reached a certain age they became “zoo surplus” and were sold at exotic animal auctions to private buyers.
哈里森最终了解到了黑暗的真相：幼崽达到一定年龄后，它们就成为“动物园剩余品”，并在珍奇动物拍卖会上卖给私人买家。
These auctions were raucous events, attended mostly by veteran wildlife keepers and professional breeders that zoos relied on to supply their collections.
这些拍卖会非常热闹，参加者大多是经验丰富的野生动物饲养员和专业饲养员，动物园依靠他们来提供藏品。
Harrison attended a few and noticed the same employees who weeks earlier had been talking up the conservation value of the zoo’s tiger babies, holding cub after cub up by their armpits to sell to the highest buyer.
哈里森参加了一些活动，并注意到几周前一直在谈论动物园虎宝宝的保护价值的员工，他们把一只又一只幼崽抱在腋下，然后卖给最高的买家。
The whole scene was commonplace at the time.
整个场景在当时是司空见惯的。
“No one thought anything of it,” Harrison said.
“没有人想到这件事，”哈里森说。
The zoo baby phenomenon led to a surge in private big cat ownership.
动物园婴儿现象导致私人大型猫科动物拥有量激增。
In the 1990s, according to Harrison, wildlife-related television spread the idea of owning a pet tiger to a much wider audience.
哈里森表示，在 20 世纪 90 年代，与野生动物相关的电视将拥有一只宠物老虎的想法传播给了更广泛的观众。
Jack Hanna types bottle-fed cubs and paraded tigers on leashes on talk shows.
杰克·汉纳 (Jack Hanna) 在脱口秀节目中用奶瓶喂养的幼崽和拴着皮带的老虎在游行。
The predators appeared no more dangerous than a golden retriever.
这些掠食者看起来并不比金毛猎犬更危险。
“It was like somebody flipped a switch on,” Harrison said.
“就像有人打开了开关，”哈里森说。
At the time, Harrison was the lone police officer in Ohio who could handle big cat emergencies; he suddenly went from getting a couple calls a year to getting more than 100.
当时，哈里森是俄亥俄州唯一能够处理大型猫科动物紧急情况的警官。他突然从一年接到几个电话变成了一百多个电话。
After removing an unruly pet from someone’s property, he’d ask people why they thought it was a good idea to own a lion or tiger.
在将不守规矩的宠物从某人的财产中移走后，他会问人们为什么认为拥有狮子或老虎是个好主意。
Many responded it was because they’d seen it on TV.
许多人回答说这是因为他们在电视上看到过。
Harrison started calling it the Steve Irwin syndrome.
哈里森开始将其称为史蒂夫·欧文综合症。
That turns out to be an apt diagnosis.
事实证明这是一个恰当的诊断。
According to research conducted by scientists at Duke University, seeing a wild animal in an unnatural, human setting — a chimpanzee drinking out of a baby bottle or sitting through a talk show interview — makes people less likely to donate to a conservation organization that aids that species and more likely to think the creature in question would make a great pet.
根据杜克大学科学家进行的研究，在非自然的人类环境中看到野生动物——一只黑猩猩用婴儿奶瓶喝水或坐着接受脱口秀采访——会让人们不太可能向帮助该物种的保护组织捐款，而更有可能认为该生物会成为很棒的宠物。
According to Kara Walker, now a behavioral ecologist at North Carolina State University and lead author of the research, published in 2011 in the journal PLOS One, this also extends to people’s thought process after an encounter with a cub, which might go something like: Look at this cuddly tiger!
卡拉·沃克 (Kara Walker) 现为北卡罗来纳州立大学行为生态学家，也是该研究的主要作者，该研究于 2011 年发表在《PLOS One》杂志上，她表示，这也延伸到了人们在遇到幼崽后的思维过程，可能会是这样的：看看这只可爱的老虎！
I got to pet it for 20 minutes and it licked my hand and now I can have a tiger, too!
我抚摸了它 20 分钟，它舔了我的手，现在我也能拥有一只老虎了！
Enterprising private exotic animal owners capitalized on the moment.
富有进取心的私人珍奇动物主人抓住了这一时机。
They realized they could make a killing holding their own cub petting events at malls, fairs, and roadside zoos, which compounded an already vicious breeding pattern.
他们意识到，在商场、集市和路边动物园举办自己的幼崽抚摸活动可以赚大钱，这加剧了本已邪恶的繁殖模式。
“I call it the breed and dump cycle,” said Nasser, the Michigan State law professor.
“我称之为繁殖和倾倒周期，”密歇根州立大学法学教授纳赛尔说。
That cycle is largely responsible for the proliferation of tigers throughout the U.S., and by the middle of the last decade, the most notorious of all the breed-and-dump outfits belonged to Joe Exotic.
这个循环在很大程度上导致了美国各地老虎的扩散，到了上个十年中期，最臭名昭著的繁殖和丢弃机构属于乔·异国情调（Joe Exotic）。
But cub-petting events weren’t enough for Joe.
但抚摸幼崽的活动对乔来说还不够。
Concerned with fame and fortune, he plotted ways to grow his online following and commercialize the business.
出于对名誉和财富的考虑，他想出了一些方法来增加他的在线粉丝并将业务商业化。
He started selling Tiger King–branded candy, apparel, and condoms.
他开始销售虎王品牌的糖果、服装和避孕套。
He also kept zoo costs down by euthanizing sterile or defective tigers and turned donated animals that weren’t moneymakers — especially emus — into cat food.
他还通过对不育或有缺陷的老虎实施安乐死来降低动物园成本，并将捐赠的不赚钱的动物——尤其是鸸鹋——变成猫粮。
During regular inspections of Joe’s zoo, the USDA cited hundreds of American Welfare Act violations.
在对乔的动物园进行定期检查时，美国农业部列举了数百起违反《美国福利法》的行为。
The agency conducted four investigations, including one that looked into the deaths of 23 tiger cubs from 2009 to 2010.
该机构进行了四项调查，其中一项调查了 2009 年至 2010 年期间 23 只虎崽的死亡情况。
(As an endangered species, tigers cannot be killed unless there is a legitimate reason, such as ending the life of a sick tiger.) Animal rights groups such as PETA conducted their own covert investigations, revealing what they claimed was gross abuse — dead and dying animals, extremely crowded cages lacking basic necessities such as water, and untrained staff who routinely abused animals.
（作为濒临灭绝的物种，除非有正当理由，例如结束生病老虎的生命，否则不能杀死老虎。）善待动物组织等动物权利组织进行了自己的秘密调查，揭露了他们声称的严重虐待行为——死亡和垂死的动物，极其拥挤的笼子缺乏水等基本必需品，以及经常虐待动物的未经培训的工作人员。
In retaliation, Joe launched social media attacks and filed dozens of contrived police reports claiming his accusers were the ones who were breaking the law.
作为报复，乔发起了社交媒体攻击，并提交了数十份人为的警方报告，声称指控他的人是违法者。
For years, Joe’s strategy worked: Profit off cubs.
多年来，乔的策略一直奏效：从幼崽身上获利。
Evade his enemies.
躲避他的敌人。
Skirt the law.
规避法律。
It probably would’ve continued to work had Joe’s path not collided, as he once put it, with “some bitch down there in Florida.”
如果乔的道路没有像他曾经说过的那样与“佛罗里达州的某个母狗”发生冲突，它可能会继续发挥作用。
* * *
** **
Vultures circle overhead as Carole Baskin and I make our way along a secluded stretch of the Upper Tampa Bay Trail, about 15 miles outside of downtown Tampa.
我和卡罗尔·巴斯金 (Carole Baskin) 沿着上坦帕湾步道 (Upper Tampa Bay Trail) 的一段僻静路段前行，秃鹫在头顶盘旋，距离坦帕市中心约 15 英里。
A spring breeze flutters her waist-length blond hair and blows through the thick surrounding brush of oaks and palmettos.
春风吹拂着她齐腰的金发，吹过周围茂密的橡树和棕榈树丛。
Despite the blue sky and sunshine, the trail is empty.
尽管天空蔚蓝，阳光明媚，小路上却空无一人。
The only sound is the rustle of leaves and crunch of Baskin’s leopard-print boots on the pavement.
唯一的声音是树叶的沙沙声和巴斯金的豹纹靴子踩在人行道上的嘎吱声。
It was this trail, Baskin explained to me, on which she regularly bikes to work, that a hitman had identified as a place to take her out.
巴斯金向我解释说，正是这条小路，她经常骑自行车去上班，一名杀手已经确定了要带走她的地方。
Baskin is arguably the most well-known activist in the country campaigning against big cat ownership.
巴斯金可以说是该国最著名的反对养大型猫科动物的活动家。
She also takes in unwanted exotic cats at Big Cat Rescue, her sanctuary in Tampa, which currently houses 66 cats belonging to 11 different species.
她还在坦帕的 Big Cat Rescue 庇护所收养了不需要的外来猫，该庇护所目前饲养着 11 个不同物种的 66 只猫。
It’s one of the few places in the U.S. capable of providing these animals with a safe, reasonably good life in captivity.
它是美国为数不多的能够为这些动物提供安全、相当良好的圈养生活的地方之一。
Like Harrison, Baskin used to be part of the problem.
和哈里森一样，巴斯金也曾经是问题的一部分。
A pivot from big cat owner to big cat conservationist is a common story among advocates in the field.
从大型猫科动物主人转向大型猫科动物保护主义者是该领域倡导者的常见故事。
Baskin stumbled into owning an exotic cat in the early 1990s at the age of 31.
20 世纪 90 年代初，31 岁的巴斯金偶然养了一只异国猫。
She and her ex-husband, Don, worked together in the real estate business.
她和她的前夫唐一起从事房地产行业。
They used llamas to mitigate the brush on the Florida properties they sold, and the easiest place to get a llama was at an exotic animal auction.
他们用美洲驼来减轻对他们出售的佛罗里达房产的刷子，而最容易获得美洲驼的地方是在异国动物拍卖会上。
At one memorable event, a man seated next to Baskin bid on a baby bobcat.
在一次令人难忘的活动中，坐在巴斯金旁边的一名男子竞标了一只小山猫。
Baskin couldn’t help but lean over and whisper: “When that cat grows up, she is going to tear your face off.”
巴斯金忍不住凑过去低声说道：“等那只猫长大了，她会把你的脸撕下来的。”
“I’m a taxidermist,” the man replied.
“我是一名动物标本剥制师，”该男子回答道。
“I’m just gonna club her in the head in the parking lot and make her into a den ornament.”
“我只想在停车场用棍子打她的头，把她变成一个书房装饰品。”
Baskin was horrified.
巴斯金吓坏了。
Don outbid the man and they brought home the 6-month-old kitten, which Baskin named Windsong.
唐出价比那个男人高，他们把这只 6 个月大的小猫带回家，巴斯金给它取名为 Windsong。
As Windsong grew, the bobcat terrorized Baskin’s daughter and the family’s German shepherd.
随着风歌的成长，这只山猫开始恐吓巴斯金的女儿和家里的德国牧羊犬。
The solution, Baskin decided, was to get Windsong a playmate.
巴斯金决定，解决办法是给风歌找个玩伴。
Don found a guy in Minnesota who agreed to sell them a bobcat kitten.
唐在明尼苏达找到了一个人，他同意卖给他们一只山猫小猫。
Turned out, the man was a fur farmer; Baskin and Don came back from that trip with 56 bobcat and lynx kittens — everything the farmer had for sale.
原来，该男子是一名毛皮养殖户；巴斯金和唐带着 56 只山猫和山猫小猫回来了，这是农民出售的所有东西。
The following year, they returned to rescue the 28 adult cats, too.
第二年，他们又回来营救了 28 只成年猫。
With their home overrun by exotic cats, Baskin and Don transformed a nearby 40-acre property they owned into a sanctuary, albeit with misguided tourism and breeding components.
由于家里到处都是异国猫，巴斯金和唐将附近他们拥有的 40 英亩土地改造成一个保护区，尽管其中有误导性的旅游和繁殖成分。
They called it Wildlife on Easy Street.
他们称其为“轻松街上的野生动物”。
They amassed a collection of at least 150 exotic cats of 17 species.
他们收藏了 17 个品种的至少 150 只外来猫。
For $75 a night, visitors could share a small cabin with a bobcat, cougar, or serval.
每晚花费 75 美元，游客可以与山猫、美洲狮或薮猫共享一个小木屋。
Baskin started breeding half a dozen big cat species, including ocelots and leopards.
巴斯金开始饲养六种大型猫科动物，包括豹猫和豹子。
Pre-internet, all Baskin’s information came from breeders and dealers, who had their own motivations.
在互联网出现之前，巴斯金的所有信息都来自饲养员和经销商，他们有自己的动机。
“They were saying, ‘Oh, you should breed these animals because they’re endangered and the zoos don’t know what they’re doing and they’re going to disappear from the wild,’” Baskin said.
“他们说，‘哦，你应该饲养这些动物，因为它们濒临灭绝，动物园不知道它们在做什么，它们将从野外消失，’”巴斯金说。
“So, we thought, well, that’s something we could definitely do to help save the cats.”
“所以，我们认为，我们绝对可以做一些事情来帮助拯救猫。”
But people who bought kittens from Baskin often returned the cats after they grew up.
但从巴斯金购买小猫的人通常会在猫长大后将其退回。
Once, a Siberian lynx — an animal Baskin swore she recognized from when it was young — showed up at auction.
有一次，一只西伯利亚山猫——巴斯金发誓她从小就认出这种动物——出现在拍卖会上。
People started donating cats to Baskin’s sanctuary by the dozens.
人们开始向巴斯金的庇护所捐赠数十只猫。
Some years, she turned away hundreds of animals due to a lack of space.
有几年，由于空间不足，她拒绝了数百只动物。
Around the same time, Baskin started attending conferences held by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, where she learned a few hard truths.
大约在同一时间，巴斯金开始参加动物园和水族馆协会举办的会议，在那里她学到了一些残酷的事实。
None of these cats had any conservation value for their species.
这些猫对其物种都没有任何保护价值。
In fact, Baskin realized big cats had no business being bred and kept as pets at all.
事实上，巴斯金意识到大型猫科动物根本没有必要被饲养和作为宠物饲养。
## Help us fund our next story
## 帮助我们资助我们的下一个故事
We’ve published hundreds of original stories, all funded by you — including personal essays, reported features, and reading lists.
我们已经出版了数百篇原创故事，全部由您资助——包括个人论文、报道专题和阅读清单。
In 1997, Baskin pulled a 180.
1997 年，巴斯金跑出了 180 度。
She stopped breeding and began spaying and neutering all of her animals.
她停止繁殖并开始对她所有的动物进行绝育。
She started enforcing a new rule in 2003: Big Cat Rescue, her rebranded sanctuary, would take any unwanted tiger, lion, savannah, or whatever else, but in return the owner had to sign a contract forfeiting their right to own a big cat.
她于 2003 年开始执行一项新规定：大型猫科动物救援中心（她重新命名的保护区）将接收任何不需要的老虎、狮子、大草原或其他任何动物，但作为回报，主人必须签署一份合同，放弃拥有大型猫科动物的权利。
“We’re the only place that absolutely insists that if you’re going to dump an animal here, you are never going to own another exotic cat,” Baskin said.
巴斯金说：“我们是唯一一个绝对坚持认为，如果你要把一只动物扔在这里，你就永远不会再拥有另一只异国猫的地方。”
The contracts were a good start, but Carole had an even bigger goal in mind: ending all big cat ownership.
这些合同是一个良好的开端，但卡罗尔心中有一个更大的目标：结束所有大型猫科动物的所有权。
Critical to realizing that vision is Howard Baskin, a businessman from Poughkeepsie, New York, who Carole met at an event at the Florida aquarium in 2002.
对于实现这一愿景至关重要的是来自纽约州波基普西市的商人霍华德·巴斯金 (Howard Baskin)，卡罗尔于 2002 年在佛罗里达水族馆的一次活动中认识了他。
(Baskin’s previous husband walked out the door one day and was never seen or heard from again — though she was questioned, no evidence was ever found linking Baskin to his disappearance.) A lifelong bachelor with a Harvard MBA and a law degree from the University of Miami, Howard appears in many ways Carole’s opposite.
（巴斯金的前任丈夫有一天走出家门，从此再也没有人见过他，也没有任何消息——尽管她受到了询问，但没有发现任何证据表明巴斯金与他的失踪有关。） 霍华德是一位终身单身汉，拥有哈佛 MBA 学位和迈阿密大学法学学位，在很多方面都与卡罗尔相反。
Carole dresses like a Woodstock attendee and carries herself with the breezy grace of a dancer.
卡罗尔的穿着就像伍德斯托克音乐节的参加者一样，举止充满舞者般的轻松优雅。
Howard trundles along, turtle-like, in dad-style khakis with a cell phone holster.
霍华德穿着爸爸式的卡其裤，背着手机皮套，像乌龟一样缓慢地走着。
But they make a good team.
但他们是一支优秀的团队。
Howard handles the administrative and legal duties and Carole focuses on advocacy.
霍华德负责行政和法律职责，卡罗尔则专注于宣传。
“On our honeymoon, we wrote a 25-year plan to stop the big cat abuses that bad guys hold dear,” Carole said.
“在蜜月期间，我们制定了一项为期 25 年的计划，以制止坏人所珍视的虐待大型猫科动物的行为，”卡罗尔说。
Carole and Howard started by setting up a Google alert for cub-petting events around the country.
卡罗尔和霍华德首先为全国各地的幼崽抚摸活动设置了谷歌警报。
Baskin would email the venues explaining the downsides of cub petting and asking them to cancel the event, and if they did not respond, she would then direct her hundreds of thousands of social media followers to flood the venues with emails explaining the downsides of cub petting.
巴斯金会向场馆发送电子邮件，解释抚摸幼崽的缺点，并要求他们取消活动，如果他们没有回应，她就会引导数十万社交媒体粉丝向场馆发送大量电子邮件，解释抚摸幼崽的缺点。
One by one, malls began to call off the events.
一家又一家的商场开始取消这些活动。
(Fairs proved more impervious to the bad PR.) Baskin homed in on the primary players in the exotic cat world and publicized her findings on 911animalabuse.com, a website she created.
（事实证明，博览会更不受不良公关的影响。）巴斯金将目光瞄准了异国猫世界的主要参与者，并在她创建的网站 911animalabuse.com 上公布了她的发现。
One individual stood out among all the breeders: a guy with a dozen different aliases, but whose cub petting photos always included the same motley group of heavily tattooed, pierced, longhaired workers.
在所有饲养员中，有一个人脱颖而出：这个人有十几个不同的化名，但他抚摸幼崽的照片总是包含同一群杂乱无章的纹身、穿孔、长发的工人。
It was Joe Exotic’s crew.
那是乔·异国情调的船员。
* * *
** **
As Baskin ramped up her efforts, Joe’s profits plummeted.
随着巴斯金加大努力，乔的利润直线下降。
In retaliation, he launched a smear campaign against Baskin’s nonprofit.
作为报复，他发起了针对巴斯金非营利组织的抹黑运动。
He renamed his cub-petting show Big Cat Rescue Entertainment and designed a near-identical copy of Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue logo.
他将自己的幼崽抚摸节目重新命名为“大猫救援娱乐”，并设计了一个与巴斯金的“大猫救援”标志几乎一模一样的副本。
The Baskins sued Joe in 2011 for copyright infringement.
2011 年，巴斯金队起诉乔侵犯版权。
Joe countersued, but those claims were tossed out by a judge.
乔提出反诉，但这些主张被法官驳回。
Joe eventually agreed to a consent judgement north of $1 million, which he had no intention of paying.
乔最终同意了 100 万美元以上的同意判决，但他无意支付这笔费用。
He did everything he could to obscure his money, changing the name of his zoo and transferring assets to an account in his mother’s name.
他想尽一切办法掩盖自己的钱财，更改动物园的名称，并将资产转移到他母亲名下的账户。
Joe also made a series of increasingly unhinged videos posted on social media threatening Baskin’s life.
乔还在社交媒体上发布了一系列越来越精神错乱的视频，威胁巴斯金的生命。
One featured an effigy of Baskin.
其中一幅以巴斯金的肖像为特色。
Another depicted Baskin’s head in a jar, Silence of the Lambs–style.
另一幅描绘了巴斯金在罐子里的头，《沉默的羔羊》风格。
In 2015, Baskin got a call from a woman who said Joe had inquired with her then-husband, who she said was a former military sharpshooter, about hiring her husband to kill Baskin.
2015 年，巴斯金接到一名妇女的电话，她说乔曾向她当时的丈夫（她说她是一名前军事神枪手）询问有关雇用她丈夫杀死巴斯金的事情。
Nearly two years later, Baskin received a similar warning from a woman named Ashley Webster, an aspiring wildlife biologist from Colorado who had just started working at Joe’s park.
大约两年后，巴斯金收到了一位名叫阿什利·韦伯斯特 (Ashley Webster) 的女士的类似警告，她是一位来自科罗拉多州的有抱负的野生动物生物学家，刚刚开始在乔的公园工作。
In a deposition, Webster recalled Joe saying “something along the lines of he’d give me a few thousand dollars to go to Florida and put a bullet in [Baskin’s] head.” Carole and Howard reported the incidents to police, but nothing seemed to come of it.
在一份证词中，韦伯斯特回忆说，乔说“他会给我几千美元，让我去佛罗里达，向[巴斯金]的头部开一枪。”卡罗尔和霍华德向警方报告了这些事件，但似乎没有任何结果。
Unbeknownst to the Baskins, the FWS had launched an investigation of Joe and his zoo in 2016 for potential animal trafficking violations.
巴斯金斯夫妇不知道的是，FWS 于 2016 年对乔和他的动物园发起了调查，调查其是否存在潜在的动物贩运违法行为。
The saga, which has been detailed at length in various news reports, involved an FWS agent convincing a man named James Garretson, who’d done big cat business with Joe in the past, to become a government informant.
这个传奇故事在各种新闻报道中都有详细描述，其中涉及一名 FWS 特工说服一位名叫詹姆斯·加勒森 (James Garretson) 的男子成为政府线人，詹姆斯·加勒森过去曾与乔做过大笔生意。
Garretson agreed to attempt to arrange a meeting between Joe and an undercover FBI agent posing as a hitman.
加勒森同意尝试安排乔和一名冒充杀手的卧底联邦调查局特工会面。
At the outset, what the feds learned was that Joe already had his own scheme in the works: He planned to hire Allen Glover, a man from South Carolina who’d been convicted of assault, for the job.
一开始，联邦调查局了解到乔已经在酝酿自己的计划：他计划聘请来自南卡罗来纳州、因袭击罪被定罪的艾伦·格洛弗 (Allen Glover) 担任这项工作。
Glover was a longtime associate of a man named Jeff Lowe, who’d done business with Joe and shortly after started hanging around the Tiger King and his world.
格洛弗是一个名叫杰夫·洛（Jeff Lowe）的人的长期合伙人，他与乔做了生意，不久之后就开始在虎王和他的世界里闲逛。
Joe, who was under the impression that Lowe was wealthy, made his new friend the co-owner of the zoo’s land, along with his mother.
乔以为洛很富有，于是让他的新朋友和他的母亲一起成为动物园土地的共同所有者。
In exchange, Lowe, according to a deposition, said he would pay a portion of Joe’s mounting bills at the zoo and let Joe run the park as usual.
根据一份证词，作为交换，洛表示他将支付乔在动物园不断增加的部分费用，并让乔像往常一样经营公园。
“The whole thing was to put the zoo in his name so Carole couldn’t get it,” Joe told me.
“整件事就是把动物园放在他的名下，这样卡罗尔就拿不到它了，”乔告诉我。
But Lowe had other plans.
但洛还有其他计划。
In a May 2018 deposition, Lowe admitted that he was interested in the zoo for himself.
在 2018 年 5 月的证词中，洛承认他本人对动物园很感兴趣。
According to Glover, who testified at Joe’s trial, he and Joe settled on a $5,000 down payment for the hit on Baskin and discussed other details such as what weapon to use.
据在乔的审判中作证的格洛弗称，他和乔就袭击巴斯金支付了 5,000 美元的首付，并讨论了其他细节，例如使用什么武器。
Glover said that Joe eventually gave him $3,000 cash and a cell phone loaded with pictures of Baskin.
格洛弗说，乔最终给了他 3000 美元现金和一部装有巴斯金照片的手机。
But during his two days on the stand, Glover claimed he’d always intended to take the money and run.
但在出庭的两天里，格洛弗声称他一直打算拿了钱就跑。
For his part, Joe denies giving Glover the phone, and said that Lowe was the one who instructed him to pay Glover.
乔则否认将手机交给了格洛弗，并表示洛是指示他向格洛弗付款的人。
(Lowe declined multiple interview requests for this story.) Glover did travel east, but in court he said he only made it as far as an unknown beach in Florida, where he partied most of the money away in a single night.
（洛拒绝了对本文的多次采访请求。）格洛弗确实向东旅行，但在法庭上，他说他只到达了佛罗里达州一个不知名的海滩，在那里他一晚上就把大部分钱花光了。
Glover claimed that it was not his intention to kill Baskin in Florida, but rather to warn her that Joe wanted her dead.
格洛弗声称，他无意在佛罗里达杀死巴斯金，而是警告她乔想要她死。
Meanwhile, in December 2017, Joe agreed to Garretson’s proposed meeting with the undercover FBI agent.
与此同时，2017 年 12 月，乔同意了加勒森与联邦调查局卧底特工会面的提议。
The agent quoted Joe a $10,000 fee for the hit.
经纪人向乔报出 10,000 美元的费用。
The two agreed to a rough outline of a deal, but Joe never followed through.
两人就一项交易的粗略框架达成了一致，但乔从未付诸实施。
Instead, in June, without notice, Joe and his new husband, Dillon Passage, loaded up four dogs, two baby tigers, and a baby white camel, and took off.
相反，六月，乔和他的新婚丈夫狄龙·帕萨奇（Dillon Passage）在没有事先通知的情况下，装载了四只狗、两只小老虎和一头小白骆驼，然后出发了。
(Joe’s previous husband, Travis Maldonado, accidentally shot and killed himself in October 2017.) “Joe Exotic, as far as I was concerned, was dead,” Joe told me.
（乔的前任丈夫特拉维斯·马尔多纳多于 2017 年 10 月意外开枪自杀。）“据我所知，异国乔已经死了，”乔告诉我。
He was going to create a new life with Passage.
他要和Passage一起创造新的生活。
Joe and Passage left Oklahoma and headed east, eventually landing in Gulf Breeze, Florida.
乔和帕萨奇离开俄克拉荷马州并向东行驶，最终降落在佛罗里达州的微风湾。
On a sunny September morning, Joe pulled up to the local hospital.
九月一个阳光明媚的早晨，乔把车停在当地医院。
He planned to walk in and apply for a job.
他打算走进去申请一份工作。
Instead, unmarked cars surrounded him.
相反，没有标记的汽车包围了他。
U.S. marshals jumped out, guns pointed, yelling at Joe to get on the ground.
美国法警跳了出来，用枪指着乔，大喊让他趴在地上。
Lowe had indeed been working with federal agents since as early as June.
Lowe 确实从六月起就一直在与联邦特工合作。
Less than a month before Joe’s arrest, Lowe bragged on Facebook that he’d been “setting [Joe’s] ass up for almost a year.” And it seems Lowe got what he wanted.
乔被捕前不到一个月，洛在 Facebook 上吹嘘说，他“已经为乔的屁股做了近一年的准备”。洛威似乎得到了他想要的。
He and his wife, Lauren, now run Joe’s old zoo, where they continue to churn out cubs for playtimes.
他和他的妻子劳伦现在经营着乔的旧动物园，他们继续在那里生产幼崽供玩耍。
The nursery lineup recently featured Nova, the rambunctious tiliger who bit my producer.
最近，托儿所阵容中出现了诺瓦（Nova），这只暴躁的老虎咬了我的制片人。
* * *
** **
This past March, journalists from around the country descended on downtown Oklahoma City for Joe Exotic’s trial.
今年三月，来自全国各地的记者纷纷涌入俄克拉荷马城市中心，观看乔·异国情调的审判。
Garretson and Glover testified against Joe.
加勒森和格洛弗作证指控乔。
Joe’s ex-boyfriend John Finlay testified too.
乔的前男友约翰·芬利也出庭作证。
Joe took the stand at the end of the seven-day affair.
为期七天的事件结束后，乔出庭作证。
He said he never intended for anyone to kill Carole Baskin and claimed to have known that Garretson, Glover, and Lowe were conspiring to take him down.
他说他从来没有打算让任何人杀死卡罗尔·巴斯金，并声称知道加勒森、格洛弗和洛正在密谋除掉他。
He said he played along to better understand their plan and gather evidence he could use against them.
他说，他配合是为了更好地了解他们的计划，并收集可以用来对付他们的证据。
The jury deliberated for less than three hours, then found Joe guilty on all charges, including illegally killing five tigers and illegally transporting endangered species across state lines.
陪审团审议了不到三个小时，然后裁定乔犯有所有指控，包括非法捕杀五只老虎和非法跨州运输濒危物种。
In January, a judge sentenced Joe to 22 years in federal prison.
一月份，法官判处乔在联邦监狱服刑 22 年。
In a Facebook post, Joe maintained his innocence and said he plans to appeal.
乔在脸书上发帖坚称自己无罪，并表示计划上诉。
Nasser hopes that Joe’s conviction triggers the beginning of what she calls “a long-overdue Blackfish moment for captive tigers,” referring to the popular documentary that exposed problems with the sea-park business’ treatment of orcas and led to numerous SeaWorld boycotts.
纳赛尔希望乔的定罪能够引发她所说的“圈养老虎早该出现的黑鱼时刻”，她指的是一部受欢迎的纪录片，该纪录片揭露了海洋公园企业对待逆戟鲸的问题，并导致海洋世界多次抵制。
Pending any appeals, the Baskins and other activists believe the Tiger King’s downfall could topple the industry.
在等待任何上诉之前，巴斯金斯夫妇和其他活动人士认为，虎王的倒台可能会颠覆该行业。
They hope to use the momentum and notoriety of Joe’s case to usher in sweeping legal reform of big cat ownership in the U.S.
他们希望利用乔案件的势头和恶名来引导美国大型猫科动物所有权的全面法律改革。
Baskin has been pushing for this type of reform since 1998, when she began working on what’s called the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, a federal bill unanimously voted into law in 2003 that barred the sale of big cats as pets across state lines.
自 1998 年起，巴斯金就一直在推动此类改革，当时她开始制定所谓的《圈养野生动物安全法案》，这项联邦法案于 2003 年一致投票通过，成为法律，禁止跨州出售大型猫科动物作为宠物。
Loopholes in the law, however, have rendered it largely ineffective.
然而，法律中的漏洞使其基本上无效。
She and Howard — along with major nonprofit groups such as the Humane Society and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) — have been pushing a new bill, the Big Cat Public Safety Act.
她和霍华德以及人道协会和国际动物福利基金会（IFAW）等主要非营利组织一直在推动一项新法案，即《大型猫科动物公共安全法案》。
First introduced in 2012, the legislation would ban all public contact with big cats, including cub petting, and would require all big cat owners to register their animals.
该立法于 2012 年首次提出，将禁止公众与大型猫科动物的所有接触，包括抚摸幼崽，并要求所有大型猫科动物主人对他们的动物进行登记。
Howard hired a top Republican lobbying firm in 2014 to work with Harrison to champion the bill — not for its conservation clout, but on its pubic safety merits.
2014 年，霍华德聘请了一家顶级共和党游说公司与哈里森合作支持该法案——不是因为它在环境保护方面的影响力，而是因为它对公共安全的好处。
Senator Susan Collins signed on to the bill last November, the first republican cosponsor.
去年 11 月，参议员苏珊·柯林斯 (Susan Collins) 签署了该法案，成为第一位共和党共同提案人。
Three other Republican senators, including Richard Burr of North Carolina, have since joined Collins.
其他三名共和党参议员，包括北卡罗来纳州的理查德·伯尔，此后也加入了柯林斯的行列。
The registrations would provide officials with valuable insight into who owns what and where — potentially life-saving information in the event of, say, a tornado blowing through a tiger park.
这些登记将为官员们提供宝贵的见解，了解谁拥有什么以及在哪里拥有什么——例如，在龙卷风吹过老虎公园的情况下，这可能是挽救生命的信息。
The ban on cub petting, though, is the most important part of the bill, as proponents believe it would disincentivize the breeding of big cats.
不过，禁止抚摸幼崽是该法案最重要的部分，因为支持者认为这会抑制大型猫科动物的繁殖。
Last year, the bill made it out of the Committee on Natural Resources in a bipartisan vote and could soon head to the House floor, where it has broad support.
去年，该法案在两党投票中通过了自然资源委员会，并可能很快进入众议院，并得到了广泛的支持。
“Law enforcement has enough problems trying to protect the public without having to run into a house where there might be a tiger,” said Harrison.
哈里森说：“执法部门在保护公众的同时，也遇到了足够多的问题，而不必跑进可能有老虎的房子。”
Dozens of Republican lawmakers support it — a party full of politicians, who, Harrison said, for the most part “don’t give a crap about cats.”
数十名共和党议员支持这一法案——这个政党里充满了政客，哈里森说，他们中的大多数人“根本不在乎猫”。
For now, though, cub petting remains a lucrative industry.
但就目前而言，抚摸幼崽仍然是一个利润丰厚的行业。
According to data compiled by a team of New York University researchers in 2016, at least 77 facilities across the country allowed interactions with exotic animals (about a quarter of those were with big cats).
根据纽约大学研究小组 2016 年编制的数据，全国至少有 77 个设施允许与外来动物互动（其中约四分之一是与大型猫科动物）。
In a follow-up study in 2019, which focused specifically on tiger petting, those same zoos were still open.
在 2019 年的一项专门针对老虎抚摸的后续研究中，这些动物园仍然开放。
One operation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, run by Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, charges up to $339 per person for tours and cub-petting sessions.
南卡罗来纳州默特尔比奇的一家机构由 Bhagavan “Doc” Antle 经营，每人参观和抚摸幼崽的费用高达 339 美元。
Supporters of the Big Cat Public Safety Act believe that ending cub petting would go a long way toward stopping the trade of big cats altogether.
《大型猫科动物公共安全法案》的支持者认为，停止抚摸幼崽将对彻底停止大型猫科动物贸易大有帮助。
“Without ending public contact, you’re not going to have sufficient incentive for all the fly-by-night exhibitors to stop breeding,” said Nasser.
纳赛尔说：“如果不结束公众接触，你就没有足够的动力让所有不可靠的参展商停止繁殖。”
The new protections would extend to smaller species such as jaguars and even unnatural hybrids like Nova.
新的保护措施将扩大到美洲虎等较小的物种，甚至包括新星这样的非自然杂交物种。
They’d also apply to accredited zoos.
他们还向经过认可的动物园提出申请。
While the zoo baby phenomenon is no longer as rabid as it once was, not all zoos have ended the practice of animal meet-and-greets.
虽然动物园婴儿现象不再像以前那么狂热，但并非所有动物园都结束了动物见面会的做法。
The Nashville Zoo provides clouded leopard cubs for zoo fundraisers and media events (zoo officials say that play and petting sessions are not allowed), and the Dallas Zoo recently held a cheetah photo op session for the Dallas Stars (zoo officials point out none of the Stars were able to pet the cheetah, however).
纳什维尔动物园为动物园筹款活动和媒体活动提供云豹幼崽（动物园官员表示不允许玩耍和抚摸），达拉斯动物园最近为达拉斯明星队举办了猎豹合影活动（但动物园官员指出明星队中没有人能够抚摸猎豹）。
Limiting and eventually banning big cat ownership in the U.S. would almost certainly be a boon for the species worldwide.
在美国限制并最终禁止大型猫科动物的饲养几乎肯定会对全世界的物种带来好处。
Fewer than 4,000 tigers survive in the wild today.
如今，野外生存的老虎不足 4,000 只。
But they are farmed by the thousands in China, Laos, and other Southeast Asian countries where big cat parts are sought after as erroneous medicinal remedies and status-touting commodities.
但中国、老挝和其他东南亚国家有数以千计的大型猫科动物养殖场，这些国家的大型猫科动物器官被视为错误的药物和炫耀地位的商品而受到追捧。
Tiger bone wine, in particular, is considered a cure-all tonic, a virility booster for men, and a coveted, favor-winning gift for superiors, elders, and relatives.
尤其是虎骨酒，被认为是包治百病的滋补品、男性的壮阳药，也是上级、长辈和亲戚梦寐以求、备受青睐的礼物。
Tiger bone is banned in China, and it’s illegal to trade big cats and their parts in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
虎骨在中国被禁止，在越南和东南亚其他地方交易大型猫科动物及其身体部位也是非法的。
But there’s a robust black market for tiger bones, skin, teeth, and claws — and farmed tiger parts keep demand for these items alive, perpetuating poaching.
但虎骨、虎皮、虎牙和虎爪的黑市十分活跃，而养殖的老虎器官使对这些物品的需求保持旺盛，从而使偷猎活动持续存在。
The U.S. government considers closing tiger farms integral to saving wild tigers, but when State Department officials try to negotiate this point with foreign diplomats — especially those from China — they’re often told to clean up their own mess first.
美国政府认为关闭老虎养殖场是拯救野生老虎不可或缺的一部分，但当国务院官员试图与外国外交官（尤其是来自中国的外交官）就此问题进行谈判时，他们经常被告知要先收拾好自己的烂摊子。
“When I talk to government leaders about tiger farming in many of the Asian countries, quite often they ask me, ‘What about tigers in the U.S.?
“当我与许多亚洲国家的政府领导人谈论老虎养殖时，他们经常问我，‘美国的老虎怎么样？
What role do the tigers in private backyards in the U.S. contribute to wild tiger conservation?’” said Grace Ge Gabriel, IFAW’s Asia regional director.
美国私人后院的老虎对野生老虎保护有何贡献？”IFAW 亚洲区域总监 Grace Ge Gabriel 说道。
“Literally, I am speechless.
“说实话，我无语了。
I don’t have an answer.”
我没有答案。”
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After I first contacted Joe following his trial, we spoke several times over the next few months.
在乔受审后我第一次联系他后，我们在接下来的几个月里多次交谈。
He liked to talk, only cutting off our calls if another person in the prison needed to use the phone.
他喜欢说话，只有当监狱里的另一个人需要使用电话时才会切断我们的电话。
Joe never admitted any wrongdoing when it came to Baskin; rather, he was eager to defend his innocence.
乔从未承认对巴斯金有任何不当行为。相反，他急于捍卫自己的清白。
Multiple times he told me, “That whole mess was nothing but a setup.”
他多次告诉我，“整个混乱只不过是一个安排。”
Joe did cop to something else, though.
不过，乔确实有别的事情。
He said being locked up in jail had made him realize he’d mistreated the animals all those years, depriving them of their freedom and robbing them of their dignity by keeping them behind bars.
他说，被关进监狱让他意识到这些年来他虐待了这些动物，剥夺了它们的自由，并通过将它们关在监狱里剥夺了它们的尊严。
Joe told me he regretted having done that.
乔告诉我他后悔这么做了。
“Now that I have nothing to do besides sit in a cell with no TV, no radio, no nothing, I know exactly what I did to those [animals],” he said.
“现在我除了坐在没有电视、没有收音机、什么都没有的牢房里无事可做，我清楚地知道我对那些[动物]做了什么，”他说。
“We can all be drove crazy by doing nothing.”
“如果什么也不做，我们都会被逼疯。”
To make amends, Joe told me he plans to create a new zoo when he gets out.
为了弥补这一点，乔告诉我，他计划出狱后建造一个新动物园。
This one without any cages.
这个是没有笼子的。
Just tigers roaming free.
只有老虎在自由漫游。
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You can listen to our four-part “Cat People” podcast series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
您可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或任何可以获得播客的地方收听我们的四部分“Cat People”播客系列。
Rachel Nuwer is an award-winning freelance journalist who reports about science, travel, food and adventure for the New York Times, National Geographic, BBC Future and more.
Rachel Nuwer 是一位屡获殊荣的自由记者，为《纽约时报》、《国家地理》、《BBC Future》等媒体报道科学、旅行、美食和冒险。
Her multi-award winning first book, Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking, was published in September 2018 with Da Capo Press.
她屡获殊荣的第一本书《偷猎：野生动物贩运的黑暗世界》于 2018 年 9 月由 Da Capo Press 出版。
Editors: Mike Dang and Chris OutcaltIllustrator: Zoë van DijkFact checker: Matt GilesCopy editor: Jacob Gross
编辑：Mike Dang 和 Chris Outcalt 插画家：Zoë van Dijk 事实检查：Matt Giles 文字编辑：Jacob Gross