Believe the internet and you'll think that animals are adorable little fluffbaskets with big eyes that live in piles of laundry. They're not – animals are complete turds. This is It Will Kill You.

Think of tigers and what comes to mind? Tigger from Winnie the Pooh? Tony the Tiger from the Frosties adverts? Hobbes out of Calvin and Hobbes? Rubbish – give them a chance and tigers will kill you in a second. Bastards, the lot of them.

If a tiger decides to attack you, you don't stand a chance – zoning in on you at speeds of up to 40mph, the tiger will use its massive size and strength to take you down, tearing at your throat with its teeth and staying there until you've died of strangulation or – if you're small enough – it'll pierce your windpipe or break your spinal cord. Or maybe the tiger will just swipe at you with its paws, which are powerful enough to smash cattle skulls. 

However, the tiger will only usually attack humans when they've become too old and infirm to hunt regular prey. That's right, if a tiger kills you, you'll die knowing that it was a really crappy tiger.

As the star of The Birds, Tippi Hedren developed a profound understanding with all forms of wildlife – except for her tigers, which still go around indiscriminately mauling folk.

A tiger living the animal sanctuary owned by actress Tippi Hedren – who, along with The Birds, has also starred in The Birds II and one episode of Murder She Wrote – has attacked and mauled a caretaker who was cleaning out its enclosure, leaving him in a critical condition with multiple bite wounds. Speaking of the attack, Hedren said "What makes these animals so dangerous is for no reason at all this kind of accident can happen."

Which is funny, because we always assumed that what made tigers so dangerous is the fact that they're sodding tigers, you massive idiot.

Even since God criticised the animals working on the film Jumanji for not mauling Robin Williams while he was right there in front of them, large animals have been taking in on themselves to try and wipe out a swathe of celebrities with their inherent mauling abilities. There was the Siegfried and Roy lion-maul, the Chef from South Park mauling and now one of Tippi Hedren's tigers has mauled one of Tippi Hedren's caretakers. 

Since she refuses to get arrested for drink-driving or go to parties without any knickers on – partly because she's from a classier generation and partly because she's 77 years old and, well, bleurgh – Tippi Hedren has never really been a target for much hecklerspray attention in the past.

That's not to say that she isn't famous, though – Tippi Hedren has starred in two Hitchcock movies, I Heart Huckabees and more TV shows than you can shake a stick at, plus ever since she was attacked by a lion during the filming of 1981 flop movie Roar she's been the owner of the 80-acre Shambala Preserve wildlife sanctuary 40 miles north of LA.

And all was well – until yesterday, that is, when one of Tippi Hedren's four-year-old tigers attacked and mauled caretaker Chris Orr. Although Orr was airlifted from the sanctuary and is now reportedly in a critical but stable condition, questions are starting to be asked about the safety of the sanctuary. Not that Tippi Hedren blames herself, the caretaker or the tiger itself, though, as she told the Los Angeles Times:

"It's a terrible, terrible thing that has happened. Who knows what happened to this tiger? People have kept them in closets, basements. Two of them were kept in air-conditioning systems… It came walking over to them. What makes these animals so dangerous is for no reason at all this kind of accident can happen. It isn't the tiger's fault. It is the fault of the people breeding these animals in the first place that leads them to be here."

Regardless of this, though, officers from the California Fish and Game department are investigating how such a potentially tragic episode could have taken place.

Our guess is that Tippi Hedren tried to warn the caretaker of the impending tiger-mauling, but her panicked cries of "Run For Your Life!" and "Tiger By The Tale!" were misconstrued by the worker as just crazy old Tippi randomly shouting names of films and TV shows she's starred in again. "Yes yes, you were very good in all of those things," we expect Chris Orr cheerily shouted back at Tippi, "although I feel I have to point out that you were never in a movie called Get The Hell Out Of The Cage Do It Now Do It Now My God Man There's A Fucking Tiger Behind You Oh Why Aren't You Listening To Me You Dimwit."

By which time it was all too late.

We expect.

Read more:

Tiger mauls caretaker at actress' animal sanctuary – Los Angeles Times