For anyone who has ever seen a tiger show, it's easy to become so entranced that you overlook the danger. Getting up close puts the growl in perspective.
 

Roel De Vries gazes deeply into Asta's unblinking blue-gray eyes, whispering sweet nothings in a mesmerizing mixture of Dutch and English. Leaning forward ever so slightly, he touches his nose to hers and rubs it slowly back and forth, still murmuring to the 2 1/2-year-old tiger as if she were a lover come to join him in a late-afternoon tryst.

Delighted by the display of affection, Asta vents a heartfelt, bass-toned purr of pure pleasure, thrusting her 225-pound body against the thick bars in an attempt to get closer to her master. Her tail swishes slowly in sublime contentment.

Watching over Roel's shoulder is his wife of more than 30 years. A vivacious, humor-filled, strawberry blonde, Elke breaks into an understanding smile. "The females," she explains, "they all love Roel."

Like people, says Elke, acting as interpreter for her husband who is self-conscious about his fluency in English, tigers have personality quirks and definable character traits. Some are smart; others are not so smart. Some are outgoing; some are shy. Most like to work but a few are lazy. Some are stubborn and insist on acting independently, while others enthusiastically apply themselves to training, subverting their desires to the human's commands.

Asta is one of the placid ones, and a good worker as well. A cousin, Fallah, however, is not always as imperturbable. A 6-year-old cross-eyed female who tops out at almost 300 pounds, large for her gender, Fallah had developed a particular attraction for Roel and sometimes, more likely when she is in heat, she becomes very jealous. "I have to be particularly watchful of her," Elke admits.

While attacks against trainers are rare, they do occur. Both Roel and Elke carry scars from long ago encounters and they have learned that perpetual vigilance is the key to a long, successful, and trauma-free career. During a training session, Roel works with the cats while Elke watches his back. In dealing with tigers, Roel explains, one has to constantly pay attention to what is going on and never take the animals for granted.

"It was my fault," Elke interjects, referring to the time more than a decade ago when she was jumped during a training session at a facility in The Netherlands. "I was young and I thought I knew everything. I was arrogant toward the animal."

For anyone who has ever seen a tiger show -- watched in amazement as the big cats work their way through a series of routines that typically include leapfrogging, waltzing, and vaulting through hoops -- it is easy to become so entranced with the apparent seamlessness of the choreography that the danger is overlooked.

Getting up close to the tigers, however, puts things in a different perspective. It is a sobering experience. An adult male tiger weighs almost 500 pounds and stretches seven or eight feet from nose to tail tip. Females are smaller by about one-third, but when you're talking b-i-g, the difference is negligible. A male's head is the size of a basketball and a single foot is as big as a dinner plate. Compare that to Roel, who probably weighs 150 pounds, an Elke, who ... well, much less.
 

It is late afternoon on a gorgeous early fall day when I arrive at Roel and Elke's trailer, which is located behind a tall, electronically operated gate in the center of a securely fenced, isolated tract of woodland near Richmond, a tiny community hard on the Wisconsin border about a two-hour drive north of Chicago. The leaves of the hardwoods that dot the compound are just beginning to turn and the air holds a hint of future crispness.

The De Vries share their cramped quarters with a hyperactive Sharpei and a pickpocket-prone beagle that Elke confines to a rear bedroom for the duration of my visit, the better to protect me from possible felonious assault, she explains.

As Elke, acting as interpreter for Roel, details how they ended up in northern Illinois after a lifetime in The Netherlands, the Sharpei bounds about, leaping from floor to sofa to floor to easy chair, peering out the window, sniffing at my pantsleg, bounding down the narrow hallway looking for his beagle playmate.

When they were contacted in 1990 by Illinois businessman John Cuneo, Elke says, Roel, then 67, had been working for a Dutch nature preserve for the past 18 years and she was a social worker and therapist. Both, however, had impeccable credentials as animal trainers.

When he had been a teenager, back before World War Two, Roel and his brother had gone to work for the world famous Hegenbeck Zoo and Training Center in Hamburg, Germany. They had signed on as clean-up boys, shoveling uncounted pounds of animal dung, slaving for long hours in a mysterious but fascinating world filled around the clock with primal grunts and roars. Gradually, he took on more responsibility and advanced to trainer, working with deceptively sleepy-looking lions, restless tigers, and mammoth bears that towered over the slightly built Roel like an NFL tackle hovering above a junior high school quarterback. When one of the Hegenbeck brothers opened a similar facility in Maastricht, Roel returned to The Netherlands as one of the house trainers.

Elke joined the center, also as a teenager, in 1959. Roel, by then a 36-year-old veteran trainer, took a personal interest in her internship. After a whirlwind courtship with the big cats skulking about in the background as unwitting chaperons, they married and began a partnership dedicated to animals, an arrangement that continued until 1972, when both retired. Then came the call from Cuneo, owner of the Hawthorn Corp., a company devoted to the breeding and training of tigers and elephants.

Cuneo was looking for a chief tiger trainer to replace a man who had recently died. Roel was tapped for the job and Elke would be his chief assistant.

When Roel and Elke arrived four years ago, Hawthorn had about 70 tigers, a number that has since increased to 111 thanks to Cuneo's enthusiastic breeding program. The cats range in age from recently weaned cubs, that scamper about like house pets, to venerable 18 and 20-year-olds nearing the end of their normal life span.

Almost all of them, explains Elke, acting as interpreter for Roel, are of the "white" variety, a specially bred, lighter-colored progeny descended from all three major tiger breeds: Bengals, Sumatrans, and Siberians.

As individual tigers have their traits, so do the breeds. Bengals tend to be dark and lean. Siberians are usually much larger and generally have gentle temperaments. And the Sumatrans, which are almost extinct, are usually smaller and less vividly colored than the others but they also exhibit more aggressiveness, a trait generally considered in Cuneo's business to be less than desirable. The current crop, whose individual members retain many of the personality characteristics of their breed, are mostly uniformly cream-shaded animals, svelte and sleek, with striking eyes ranging in color from feral yellow to Ann Margaret blue.

As the De Vries continue to pour forth background information, Elke senses my impatience. Pausing in the discourse, she studies me. "Would you like to see the barn?" she asks abruptly.

I thought she'd never ask.

On the short walk to the facility that Elke calls a "barn," which in actuality is a metal-roofed structure that is almost as long as a football field and serves as the main domicile for Hawthorn's tigers, Roel, explains the basics of tiger training. He makes it sound like simplicity itself.

"We begin working with the cubs when they are six or seven weeks old," he says. "That lets them get familiar with the human voice and smell."

At first, it is all play. "We want to keep them nice as long as possible." But as the cats grow older they begin learning different tasks. At about a year old they are taught to sit on a particular pedestal within a caged arena. The trainers do this by placing a piece of meat on a stick and encouraging the cat to follow the stick. Much later, when they are on the performance circuit, they will follow the stick without the meat knowing a reward will follow. When a tiger does something right, he or she is rewarded with a belt buckle-sized chunk of raw meat. When the animal does not perform, there is no treat.

At about age 2 the tigers are introduced to more complex maneuvers, such as sitting up on command, rolling over, and laying down. Once they have mastered these basic moves as individuals they are introduced to a group that varies in size between seven and 15 where the training process begins anew, getting still more complex. By the time they are 3 they are usually ready to go on tour.

Roel pauses in his instruction. We have reached the "barn."

This afternoon the structure is occupied by 23 tigers, 13 of which are members of a single tour company. The way it works at Hawthorn, tigers are assigned to groups which are under the direction of a particular trainer. Not Roel, who is the head trainer but one of the travel trainers, which might be one of the two women or three men who work for Hawthorn in that capacity.

When the group goes on tour, the trainer goes with them. The animals remain continually under the command of that trainer. At the end of a tour, the tigers and their trainer return to Richmond to await reassignment.

It is warm and humid inside the vast structure and the air is heavy with a distinctive animal smell. The odor, although impossible to ignore, is not unpleasant since grooms keep the floors immaculate. More noticeable is the low anticipatory rumble that reverberates off the metal walls. The tigers are restless; they know food is coming soon and they are impatient.

Three days a week, Roel explains, the tigers get beef, which Cuneo secures in 12,000-pound loads from a slaughterhouse that specializes in dealing with cattle whose meat is judged unfit for human consumption because of a technicality in federal regulations. Mostly, the cattle destined to be tiger food are lame or injured, which means they cannot physically walk into a slaughterhouse as required by the government. Cattle who will be the source of beef headed for the family dinner table must be able to navigate to their fate under their own power.

Two days a week the tigers are fed chicken, also secured from a wholesaler. On the seventh day, Sunday, they are not fed at all under the theory that a day of fasting keeps them healthier and more alert. While Roel is explaining this I recall a bit of tiger trivia: The animals love beef and chicken but for the most part can't stand pork.

All their meals, Roel continues, are sprinkled with a special vitamin formula produced by a company in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, a grainy material that looks like brown cornmeal but contains a host of ingredients ranging from iron, manganese and zinc to riboflavin and something called pyridoxines. Also, fish oil is periodically added to the tigers's food. This helps clean out the tigers' digestive tract. Mineral oil, as opposed to fish oil, is not good for the animals because it coats the intestines and prevents absorption of vital nutrients.

At this point I discover an anecdote that parents may find handy when trying to persuade their recalcitrant offspring to eat their vegetables. Because a tiger's diet is meat, meat, and more meat, they almost all die at around age 20 of kidney and pancreas failure, a condition brought on by an accumulation of the protein that results from their diet.
 

"Walk over here," Elke tells me, pointing to an area close to the wall. "They don't know you and it's safer."

As I assume my designated spot, Elke glances around. "Look," she laughs, "they're all looking at you. They know there's a new guy in the barn."

Several of them size me up, seemingly as if debating whether I'm tender enough for their palate. Some emit a strange bubbling exhalation.

"They're 'blowing' at you," she adds. "That's a greeting."

Less sure than Elke about the group friendliness, I keep carefully to my assigned position although Roel and Elke freely walk up to the bars, stroking and caressing the big cats as if they were pets.

As we walk down the aisle, Roel calls out their names and provides an impromptu commentary.

"This is Kim," he says, indicating a 4 1/2-year-old 300-pound female.

"She likes to tease Burma," Elke adds, referring to a tiger in the adjoining enclosure. Apparently realizing she is being talked about, Kim rolls her head in what I interpret as a somewhat threatening gesture. "Kim! Be nice!" Elke says with mock severity.

Kim seems to take the command to heart, rolling her silver-dollar-sized yellow eyes. Elke chuckles. "Kim says, 'I do nothing.'"

Roel pauses while a groom makes the rounds shoveling supper under the bars. Today's entree is beef, and as I watch the tigers using their four-inch-long fangs, crunching down with jaws that could break an oxen's back in a single bite, tearing unceremoniously into the usual 12-pound portion of dark red meat, I quickly develop a respect for Elke's admonitions to keep a respectful distance. The words "Kipling," "India," and "maneater" flash through my mind.

As we leave the barn and approach smaller adjacent units, Roel leads the way into a large shed that houses six or eight animals in separate enclosures, a unit made distinct by the fact that there is a "patio" off each enclosure that is complete with a pool about 10 feet in diameter and several feet deep.

This is sort of an R&R ward where animals are kept apart for various reasons. Some may be having difficulty working with others in their group, some may be ill, and some, like the one in the end enclosure named Taurus, may have behavior problems.

An impressively large, handsome, male about 3 1/2-years-old, Taurus determined several months ago that he did not like tigers although he gets along well with humans. When thrown into a group of big cats a fight is likely to ensue. So he has been segregated until Cuneo determines what to do with him. In the meantime, Taurus seems to be enjoying his stay in the segregation ward, wandering from his enclosure to the patio for a soak in the pool.

All the tigers, says Elke, like the pools. They not only help keep them cool in the summer but they give them the chance to engage in a little fun that proves that tigers, too, have a sense of humor.

First, she explains, they submerge themselves until only their eyes are peeking above the water. "And then when you get close, they leap out and give a great shake, wetting you down. They love doing that."

When aggressiveness is only a minor problem the trainers try to effect a speedy solution on their own. One of the larger challenges facing a trainer, Roel explains, is putting together a group of tigers that work well together. Sometimes the mixture simply doesn't work and if violence is going to break out that is when it is most likely to happen.

"Kabul," he says, referring to a 400-pound, 4 1/2-year-old male, "had trouble winning the friendship of the other tigers in his first group. He was so frustrated by this that he tried to kill his mother. So we put him in with another group and he was totally accepted." After that, his behavior straightened out.

Within the groups, tigers, like people, also learn to adapt to each other's eccentricities. "For example," says Roel, "there is Snowball." A huge male who, at 450 pounds, is near the maximum normal weight, Snowball is touchy about his reward. "You can't give him a piece of meat while we're practicing the 'laydown' routine," Roel says. "He tries to defend it and he scares the girls."

Roel confides that he gets around this by deferring Snowball's treat. "He isn't concerned that others are getting theirs while they're working because he knows he will get his later."

Although it looks ridiculously simple, the "laydown" is one of the trickiest parts of the tiger's act. That is when the animals are all in close proximity to one another and relatively idle. It is the time, Roel says, when the tigers are more likely to demonstrate how the interact with their colleagues. If two tigers don't get along, the animosity is more likely to manifest itself then than when they are all busy performing group tasks. "At that time," says Roel, "you have 15 different personalities next to one another and you have to be very careful about who is next to who."
 

Serious aggressiveness, however, the kind that can lead to problems with the public, is never taken lightly at Hawthorn.

Actually though, says the company owner, Cuneo, it is not the problem one might expect.

There was one female tiger who was so pugnacious that Cuneo donated her to a zoo in Canada, where she still charges the bars when people approach. But, in the history of Hawthorn, there has been only one tiger that was so belligerent he had to be put to sleep. He was a 7-year-old who kept getting more aggressive until his behavior was no longer tolerable. In Cuneo's view, the animal was suffering from some type of psychological problem. "Mental hospitals all over the country are filled with people like that," he says. Out of the 260 tigers that have been passed through Hawthorn over the years only three were total rejects.

In Cuneo's view, finding a solution to an aggression problem, no matter how small, is a two-pronged issue. One of the prongs, of course, is training.

"It is not politically correct to say that training is good for the animals," says Cuneo, "but compare our animals to the tigers in a zoo. The ones in the zoo are narrow through the body and they have a lot of skin hanging down from their chests and stomachs. Ours aren't like that. I believe that tigers are like people in that they have to work out to remain fit."

To keep them in shape physically and mentally as well as maintaining their performance skills, Cuneo mandates two training periods a day for his tigers, day in and day out. The periods may be as short as 10 minutes or they can go considerably longer with frequent breaks, depending on the animals and their particular stage of development.

"Those maniacs who think you train animals by beating them are out of their minds," adds the outspoken Cuneo, a man who holds strong opinions and is not shy about sharing them. "With tigers it is never a matter of physical strength. "Training is not done by brute force and to say otherwise is ludicrous. Beating makes them hysterical and you can't do anything with an hysterical animal. The only time a blow is justified is when a tiger is going after a trainer or they are going after each other."

A large man in his mid sixties with receding gray hair and gray eyes, Cuneo lives 20 minutes south of Richmond on a 75-acre estate in the only house ever designed in a collaborative enterprise by Frank Lloyd Wright and his son, an odd dwelling made memorable by the fact that all the walls intersect at 60 degree angles.

Once a trainer of tigers himself and the husband of a German-born former circus performer, a startlingly beautiful woman whose photographs from the ring and with celebrities like Ernest Hemingway and Ed Sullivan decorate his office, Cuneo also feels that private breeders, like himself, play a preeminent role in perpetuating the big cat species.

With the exception of a single tiger that was donated to the corporation by a football team that had adopted a cub as a mascot and then found itself unable to take care of it, all of Hawthorn's current tigers are house-bred.

And, because he is intrested in perfecting Hawthorn's stock, Cuneo only rarely sells a tiger. Without need to consult his records, Cuneo ticks off where his tigers have gone. "A pair went to a zoo in Sweden and three to the zoo in Miami," he says. "Four others went to a theme park in New Jersey and a single tiger went to a couple who use the animal in their dance routine. We're very careful where our animals go; when we sell one it is for a very good reason."

He began his "white" tiger program, for example, with a single male, which he bred to his normal colored females. Then, to broaden the line, he loaned the original male to the Cinicnnati Zoo, which bred him to one of its females. The result was four white cubs, two of which went back to Cueno to start the process all over again.

While some wildlife organizations feel that tigers should be left in the wild to propogate on their own, thus insuring their own future, Cuneo insists that his method of carefully controlled breeding represents the wave of the future.

"We have the luxury to operate a program similar to ones set up for cattle and horses," Cuneo says proudly. "We breeders are the true preservationists."