Know Your Neighbors

[MavKikiNYC]

Police find 180-kg tiger in New York apartment


Monday, October 6, 2003 at 07:00 JST
NEW YORK — Police removed a 180-kilogram tiger from a New York apartment in a commando-style operation Saturday.

Authorities investigated the home, in a public housing complex in New York's Harlem neighborhood, after a man checked into a nearby hospital seeking treatment for bite wounds he said came from a pit bull, officials said.

But doctors determined the bites could not have come from a dog, prompting the man, identified as Antoine Yates, 37, to leave the hospital abruptly, yanking an IV out of his arm, police said.

Meanwhile, police and animal control officers drilled a hole in the door of the apartment and spotted the tiger inside. An animal control officer abseiled down the outside of the building with a tranquilizer gun and shot the tiger through an apartment window.

"I saw him eye to eye, to say the least," said Emergency Service Unit cop Martin Duffy. "He charged twice and I shot him. He charged a last time and broke through the glass."

Police removed the tranquilized animal, bound to a stretcher, about a half hour later. It was transported to a wildlife preserve in Ohio on Sunday after spending the night in an animal shelter.

A one-meter cayman alligator was also removed from the five-bedroom apartment.

A second tiger, some cubs, two Rottweilers, rabbits and a tarantula also lived in the apartment, until some family members, including children, moved to Philadelphia in June, taking the animals with them, neighbors said.

The menagerie had been an open secret in the housing complex but animal control officers had not responded to residents' complaints.

Yates was identified as the owner of the animal and apprehended at a hospital near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, police said.

"He just has a love for animals," said his sister, Cynthia Yates. "There's nothing wrong with that." (Wire reports)

[Chiwas]

to leave the hospital abruptly, yanking an IV out of his arm, police said.

What's that?

[u2sarajevo]

Originally posted by: Chiwas

What's that?

IV is the line that they put in you to deliver fluids or medicines to you through a needle placed in your vein.

[Chiwas]

I see, IntraVenous.

Thanks, U2

[Caliente]

I live with a tiger and a lion inside of my house.
Thankfully they only weigh 10 and 12 lbs.
[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

[XERXES]

Can you believe that Siegfried & Roy were living in public housing in New York???!!!









j/k



i know...bad joke...

[dallas_esq]

I laughed Xerxes, very funny

"he just has a love for animals" I don't think so. People that keep wild animals are being cruel. Close all zoos!

[XERXES]

thanks...i'll be here all week...

[LRB]

In my home town in Arkansas, there was a couple who owned a factor and use 2 african lions for guard "dogs".

[XERXES]

what kind of factory was this?

[LRB]

I think it was prefab houses. It's been almost 20 years ago.

[MavKikiNYC]

Pity the Poor Gator, Lost in All the Roar
By JAMES BARRON

Published: October 9, 2003


Now it is time to look at things from the alligator's point of view.

The tiger became an instant superstar whose fame lasted more than 15 minutes. He got his mug, all mean and menacing, on the front pages and was mentioned on late-night comedy shows. He went from a seven-room apartment in Harlem to an even bigger home where he will have his own swimming pool. He was lionized by his owner, Antoine Yates, who continued to profess undying love after he was arraigned on Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Not a word about the gator, whom Mr. Yates seems not to have bothered to name. Or, if he did, the alligator's name was lost in all the hoopla about a tiger in an apartment.

Think about it: ordinarily, a 65-pound alligator in an apartment would be news. But put a tiger in the same apartment, and the alligator is all but ignored. Not to mention the indignity of being mistaken for a caiman. That is enough to give an alligator an inferiority complex. And alligators are not accustomed to inferiority complexes any more than they are accustomed to apartment complexes. An alligator is accustomed to waddling around thinking, to the extent that alligators think coherent thoughts that can be translated into words, attention must be paid — to me, right now.

Willy Loman an alligator is not, except when his apartment-mate is a tiger.

So neighborly get-togethers between the occupants of Apartment 5-E at 2430 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard where, the animal experts say, they must have had separate bedrooms, were out of the question. Had there been even a moment of face time, "there would be no alligator," said James Doherty, the general curator of the Bronx Zoo. Or, as Larry Wallach, the animal handler who hauled the alligator and the tiger away from Mr. Yates's building, said, "That would be like Mighty Joe Young meeting Godzilla."

But the alligator might not have been unhappy with apartment life. "I don't see that it would be, if it grew up this way," Mr. Doherty said.

The creature comforts that matter to a creature with scaly skin and an appetite for whole chickens are different from those of other tenants, who care more about the height of ceilings or the view of the outside. "I don't think he would climb up and look out the window," said Bill Holmstrom, the zoo's collection manager for reptiles. "I don't think he would stare out a window like a cat might do, but you never know."

An eat-in kitchen would not have mattered much, Mr. Holmstrom said, since the alligator could not drink from the kitchen faucet. (He would have liked to duck under the surface in a full bathtub.)

Mr. Yates said it was Ming the tiger who became toothy. Soon Mr. Yates was on the way to the hospital with a story the doctors did not believe about a too-frisky pit bull, and Ming was on the way to fame.

And the alligator? It was almost as if he had been placed in a reptile-protection program. No one seemed to know where he was, assuming he is a he. (No one seemed to know that, either, or, this being New York, whether he had clawed his way to Mr. Yates's domain after crawling out of a sewer.)

It took a few telephone calls to find out that he spent Saturday night with his 5 1/2-foot frame stretched out in front of the television, watching "The Crocodile Hunter," the Animal Planet series with the Australian adventurer Steve Irwin.

What was the alligator's favorite moment? "When we were able to shut off the program," said Mr. Wallach, who has named the alligator Lucky and was stretched out with him at his house on Long Island.

"I don't think Lucky wanted to be reminded of what people do to chase crocodiles." Even though, of course, a crocodile is an entirely different species from an alligator.

Like Ming, he is now in Ohio, though only temporarily. He will be moved to a wildlife sanctuary in Indiana next week. For now, they are 56 miles apart — Ming is in Berlin Center, and Lucky is in Columbia Station, where he has his own converted horse stall, surrounded, once again, by other creatures, including bears and a pair of albino raccoons.

"He's kind of keeping to himself, not neighborly," said Sam Mazzola, who runs Lucky's home, World Animal Studios. "It opened its mouth and chased me out of the way the first night it was here." By Tuesday, he said, "It's sitting under the heat lamp giving me the eyeball. Reptiles, you can't tell. They don't smile, they don't growl, they just bite when they feel like it."

[Caliente]

My skin just crawled off of my body.........
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[Smiles]

Originally posted by: XERXES
thanks...i'll be here all week...

I LOVE THAT MOVIE!!!

I finally got the line. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

[MFFL]

Originally posted by: MavKikiNYC
The menagerie had been an open secret in the housing complex but animal control officers had not responded to residents' complaints.

This just freaks me out.

[MavKikiNYC]

NYC Housing Authority functionaires are having a difficult time explaining why complaints from a downstairs neighbor went unheeded---complaints about, and I quote, "bucketfuls of urination" seeping down daily from the upstairs apartment housing the tiger.

[Caliente]

Who needs horror movies? Reality is scary than you think.

[LRB]

Well I always thought that living in NY would be like living in a zoo. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

[Smiles]

When I was 18, I worked part time at a ranch that was also a USDA zoological facility. One day 5 tigers and a Liger (yes, a Liger) were delivered. They had been taken from an individual who used them as watch dogs (I guess) for his facility which included warehouses, etc. We housed them for few months.

A young woman had been mauled - that's how all the big cats were discovered.

The cats were taken from a facility located located right here in Dallas.

I never read anything about it in the papers, but I was living in the sticks and a little isolated. If this is a familiar story to anyone, please PM if you know of any news stories (this was in 1995).

[Murphy3]

Ligers and Tigons

Hybrid Animals. Check out the Lion hybrids..pretty cool

[LRB]

maybe we should try to sign that Liger as a FA. Think that the MLE will be enough to feed him for a season? [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

[Caliente]

Originally posted by: Murphy3
Ligers and Tigons

Hybrid Animals. Check out the Lion hybrids..pretty cool

OMG, the Internet is truly the Genie out of the bottle.

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif[/img]