What we learned from Carole Baskin’s AMA

Carole Baskin says she wants people to see the real her. That’s why the unwilling Tiger King star is returning to television, this time for her new Discovery docuseries, Carole Baskin’s Cage Fight. Just a couple of days after the series’ November 13 debut, she also jumped on Reddit for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, furthering her mission.

“Last year, I was thrust into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Now, I’m giving you a look at the real me and the dangerous work I do to protect big cats from abusers,” she wrote. “Stream Carole Baskin’s Cage Fight for an unfiltered look at how we expose the cub petting exploiters and roadside zoos we feel are mistreating animals.”

So what did we learn from the reality star during her in-depth session? Read on to find out.

On her missing husband

One of the biggest threads anyone pulled from Tiger King when it debuted on Netflix is the disappearance of the Big Cat Rescue owner’s husband, Don Lewis, and whether Baskin had anything to do with his assumed death. Naturally, the question of what happened to him came up on the AMA when a user asked Baskin for her hot take.

“Don loved to fly and was looking to buy ultralights and experimental planes. I believe Don crashed a small experimental plane or ultralight into the Gulf for a number of reasons,” she wrote. “He wasn't licensed to fly, yet did all the time. He couldn't file a flight plan and had to take off from closed airports to evade detection,” she continued.

“He had to fly under 200 feet to stay off the radar which means he would typically fly out over the Gulf because the air is smoother there, whereas over land there are up and down drafts that will crash you at the height. Since phone records indicated he was planning to go to Texas, and his van was found at a small private airstrip and we have never found Don or wreckage, I think this was the most likely scenario.”

For those keeping track, Lewis was declared legally dead in 2002, five years after he went missing. He left behind more than $5 million in assets and as of 2021, the case of his disappearance is still open.

On being on Tiger King

Many users were curious how Baskin felt about her experience on the unexpectedly huge docuseries, which started streaming just as lockdowns were beginning in early 2020. The show made Baskin a household name, and later she was even hired to perform on Dancing With the Stars (where she danced to “Eye of the Tiger,” “What’s New Pussycat” and “Circle of Life” before her elimination).

But being thrust into the spotlight has also been hard on the personality, which she shared when someone asked her the best and worst things to come from Tiger King.

“The best thing to come of the show was that people saw how cubs are bred, ripped from their mothers, abused, and then discarded by the time they are 3 or 4 months old,” she shared. “Most people didn't know how common the practice was or that hundreds of cubs were born for such a cruel life. The worst thing to come from the show is that it weaponized every person who believed the false narrative without doing any research to know they were lied to.”

Someone else tried their version of the question when they asked how she really felt about Tiger King and whether her damaged reputation was worth the awareness she may have raised.

“If everyone were saying the things about you that people are saying here, would you have considered that to have benefitted you in any way? When people watch Carole Baskin's Cage Fight on discovery+ they will see who I really am and have always been,” she replied.

On fighting the good fight

Baskin also used her time in the AMA spotlight to speak out on behalf of the big cats she’s made it her life’s work to protect. When someone asked her about what kind of legislation she’d like to see next, she brought up her pending bill, The Big Cat Public Safety Act.

“[It] is before federal Congress now and we expect it to pass this session as it has 430 bipartisan Representatives and 34 Senators who have signed on,” she revealed. “That's already a majority in the House so all we need is a hearing and we can end cub handling and phase out private ownership of big cats across the country, once and for all.”

Meanwhile, someone else asked Baskin to name some of the other “Joe Exotics” out there, a.k.a. those who are allegedly running similar zoos without regards to the animals’ welfare.

“Kevin ‘Doc’ Antle, Mario Tabraue, Marc McCarthy, Lori Ensign-Scroggins, Gregg Woody... the list is pretty long,” she dished. “But I plan to make them all household names, right before they lose all of their animals and the right to ever exploit another one.”

Other random tidbits

Throughout the hefty conversation, people also wondered about Baskin’s history, how she came to be involved with animal rescue, some of the saddest moments of her career and why she doesn’t pay her volunteers.

Others just tried really hard to extract random information from Baskin, like how she would get a tiger to eat an actual human. “We feed our tigers beef, chicken, turkey, rat and rabbits and they are purr-snickety!” she replied. “It's extremely difficult to get a tiger or any big cat to eat something that isn't common for them.”

Another Reddit user wondered how many animal prints Baskin owns (she lost count “somewhere around 1999”), while someone else asked her whether she enjoys true crime (she does love a good mystery, but wishes “the main one” in her life had been solved by now). And then there was the person who was curious whether Baskin makes her own, now famous, flower headpieces.

“I have made some of them, I've bought some of them, and people now make and send them to me, so that's been nice,” she wrote. “It's a Haku Lei which in [I]ndigenous cultures means a celebration of life. Every day we should celebrate this amazing planet and do our part to protect it.”

Want more Baskin in your life? Read her full AMA here.

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