It is just over 8 a.m. this morning in the 16th 2020 on the national 31, not far from Beauvais, in the Oise. Cars slow down. A gendarmerie squadron bars the road towards the village of Blacourt. Around the old ceramic factory, recognizable by its high red brick fireplace, an important device is deployed. Dozens of agents, sometimes equipped with assault rifles, stand ready. They came aboard vans harnessed with bumpers. Usually, they intervene to neutralize supposedly dangerous individuals; In a few minutes, they will face wild beasts - in the literal sense. Predators over 200kg, with powerful jaws, long -of -the -cent dabes. Tigers. Ten: seven females and three males. Some are red and black, others entirely white. A veterinarian, equipped with a hypodermic rifle, is about to administer doses of anesthetic. You will have to approach them, calm their nervousness, put the most reluctant to sleep, wait several hours to finally transfer them. The day will be long.

This spectacular judicial seizure operation is actually only the emerged part of a hunt that lasted months. As in a spy novel, it took place on the margins of legality. It has experienced failures and accelerations, transgressions and controversies. She confronted two worlds that everything opposes: one of the most radical animalist associations, named One Voice; And the closed, clan, circus environment, which has preserved, through generations, its codes and its reflexes. As the National Assembly legislates at the end of the captivity of wild animals, this affair illustrates a change of time in France. A late change, if we compare it with what has already happened elsewhere in Europe and in the world, but no less abrupt. To go up the track of these bitumen tigers whose ancestors wandered under the tropics, it was necessary to cross France and, sometimes, as one of these deported specimens of Panthera Tigris, brave the elements.

Death threats

A torrential rain scatches the coasts of Morbihan. "It's the storm," observes Muriel Arnal on the third floor of a building in the center of Vannes. The offices of the One Voice association are deployed in a succession of small white boxes. On this January morning, its president, 55, walks there her frail silhouette with azure eyes. She speaks with gravity, punctuates her sentences of "I don't want to digress" and, in fact, digress. There are too many subjects, too many animals to "get out of illegal conditions of detention", to save "from hell". Muriel Arnal pronounces the expression the head in his hands, as if it were herself. Most of the time, she works at her home, but she did not want to receive us there. "I am attacked. My life is scrutinizing, "she warned on the phone, going so far as to mention death threats. In a few years, it has become the target of hunters and circusians. And they, his.

Animals are his reason for living.It can draw up a map of all the country's delphinariums and holds a file on each elephant in captivity."In France, there are eight," she says.Three days earlier, his team put online stolen images of one of them, installed near a landfill in the Gard.His phone continues to ring on this.She finishes a conversation with a journalist in front of me: "Do not hesitate to remember.This is important for Dumba.She calls the elephant by her name, as we would with a loved one.In her family, we find the Hippopotamus Jumbo that she wants to tear off from Cirque Muller;Jon, a starry lion, of which she obtained in 2020 seizure at the Cirque de Paris;And Ashley, one of the Blacourt tigers, with a white and black dress.Of the ten wild beasts are his "darling".Why him ?"You never know why," she says, suddenly damaged eyes.