A tiger at Carole Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue animal sanctuary severely bit a volunteer, nearly tearing her arm off at the shoulder, Baskin told BuzzFeed News on Thursday. Candy Couser, the volunteer, was reaching in to feed a tiger when it “grabbed her arm and nearly tore it off at the shoulder,” Baskin wrote in an email to BuzzFeed. Couser was taken to the hospital with her injury. According to Baskin, Couser was feeding the tiger, Kimba, in a way that broke standard procedure. “It is against our protocols for anyone to stick any part of their body into a cage with a cat in it,” Baskin wrote. “Candy said she just wasn’t thinking when she reached in to unclip [the cage].” Baskin gained national notoriety this spring for her role in the Netflix documentary Tiger King, later appearing on Dancing With the Stars.
