I wonder if they have looked at this guy?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=5&u=/nm/20031008/od_nm/odd_tiger_dcPet Tiger Was Man's 'Only Friend'
Wed Oct 8, 7:45 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Jeanne King
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Battered and bitten and facing seven years in prison, a man who made national headlines for keeping a fierce tiger in his New York apartment said he still loves the beast and misses him terribly.
Arraigned on Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court, Antoine Yates, 31, was charged with two counts of reckless endangerment and possession of a wild animal, all revolving around Ming, a 400-pound (180 kg), 20-month-old Siberian-Bengal tiger discovered by authorities on Saturday.
Tipped off by neighbors who complained about the stench of urine flowing from Yates' Harlem apartment, police rappelled down the side of his apartment building and hit the beast through a fifth-floor window with a tranquilizer dart.
Yates, a part-time taxi driver, was arrested on Sunday at a Philadelphia hospital where he was treated for bites from Ming, who attacked him when he tried to protect a kitten from the tiger.
"I still feel heartbroken, torn up. The pain is nothing. It is the pain in my heart that really bothers me. I really do miss him," Yates said after his court appearance.
"He was like my brother, my best friend. He was my only friend, really," Yates said.
Manhattan Criminal Judge Melissa Jackson released Yates on his own recognizance, ordering him back in court on Dec. 18 to learn if he has been indicted.
Yates faces up to seven years in state prison if convicted of the top count of reckless endangerment.
Yates also kept a three-foot (one-meter) alligator-like caiman named Al, which authorities also found in his seven-room apartment. Ming and Al had separate bedrooms.
Ming, who ate 25 chicken thighs a day, was shipped to an animal refuge in Ohio, while Al went to Indiana.
