Posted on: October 18, 2023, 08:05h.
Last up to date on: October 18, 2023, 08:07h.
When he died on Sunday at his home at age 63, Las Vegas magician Dirk Arthur left behind 10 issues requiring rapid consideration — six tigers, one snow leopard, two clouded leopards, and one bobcat.
A consultant of Clark County confirmed to KLAS-TV/Las Vegas that the county’s Animal Protection Services eliminated the cats from Arthur’s ranch — positioned South of the Las Vegas Strip close to the Silverton Casino – and are at the moment caring for them.
The rep instructed the information station that the animals are “in the process of being relocated to an appropriate animal sanctuary.”
This ought to please People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which issued a press assertion when phrase of Arthur’s loss of life had unfold on Tuesday.
“Magic acts with exploited wild cats disappeared from the Strip years ago, and PETA is calling for any exotic cats who survived Dirk Arthur to be sent to accredited sanctuaries where they’ll have space to roam, opportunities to swim and climb, and freedom from stage lights and filthy cages at last,” learn the assertion from PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Welfare Debbie Metzler.
Arthur was reportedly discovered unresponsive in his mattress by a housemate. His reason for loss of life is at the moment underneath investigation by the Clark County Coroner.
Nine Lives
“Dirk Arthur’s Wild Magic” debuted in 1997 in “Jubilee” at Bally’s, earlier than subsequent incarnations leapt to the Silverton, Plaza, Tropicana, O’Sheas, Harrah’s in Reno and Laughlin, and the Riviera, a couple of months earlier than that lodge closed in 2015.
By then known as “Dirk Arthur’s Wild Illusions,” it was the official final unique cat present ever staged on the Las Vegas Strip.
The ninth venue (and life) for “Dirk Arthur’s Wild Magic” occurred on the Westgate for 5 months in 2017 and 2018. Before opening, Arthur was compelled to scratch plans to characteristic a snow leopard, bobcat, birds, and a duck.
Arthur blamed house limitations on the time, although he had beforehand carried out in smaller showrooms. The animal-rights teams who protested the present claimed a victory when the cats have been eliminated.
Bizarre Timing
News of Arthur’s loss of life comes only a week after the twentieth anniversary of the accident that ended the profession of Siegfried & Roy, which it seems we weren’t instructed every part about on the time.
Back then, big-cat exhibits had already begun to fall out of favor due to a cultural shift towards animal welfare and conservation. But Roy Horn’s notorious tiger attack vastly hastened the tip of the period of caged animals performing acceptably for viewers amusement in Las Vegas.
By 2017, even the Ringling Brothers Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a staple of youngsters’s leisure since 1871, pulled up stakes — although the world’s most well-known huge prime returned final month with out animals.
Last Holdout
Up till July 2022, Arthur deliberate to single-handedly deliver performing huge cats again to the Las Vegas stage. He saved no less than 10 of them in a non-public zoo on a 1-acre habitat west of the Strip close to the Silverton at an estimated cost of as much as $150K per yr.
However, Arthur’s plans to stage a brand new animal present known as “Magic Unleashed” have been dashed when animal activists deluged the proprietor of the Notoriety Live theater at Fremont Street’s Neonopolis, the place Arthur had hoped to carry out, with over 400 protest emails.
Times for Arthur had apparently gotten so lean that, in line with the R-J obit, he final labored for the Westgate as an usher — presumably within the very theater the place his present as soon as headlined.
