If you’ve ever seen a tiger up close, you’ll know how absolutely awe-inspiring these creatures are. Bengal tigers have the longest canine teeth of any living cat, and they can grow to a staggering weight of 500lbs. These cats are fearsome apex predators – able to take down prey half their own weight.
But for suburban residents in Houston, Texas, a tiger came a little too close for comfort…
On May 9, 2021, a tiger was spotted roaming around suburbia. It was strolling across lawns without a care in the world.
The big cat, who was wearing a collar, was filmed by concerned residents as it lounged in someone’s front yard, completely unaccompanied.
But what was a tiger doing roaming around Ivy Wall Drive?
Jose Ramos, a neighbor, alerted residents in the area that there was a tiger on the loose via the NextDoor app and called the police.
Several videos of the prowling tiger were uploaded on Twitter, including one where someone can be heard saying “it’s somebody’s pet!”
“It was very scary,” Jose told KHOU, “because this a very family-oriented community and you see lots of kids and baby-strolling, and people taking their pets and walking them, so the first thing I thought was to alert the community so everybody would stay home.”
Shortly afterward, the situation intensified when one of the neighbors – an off-duty sheriff’s deputy – came out of his house brandishing a gun.
In the video, the Waller County Sheriff’s Office deputy can be seen pointing the gun at the tiger, who is undeterred and slowly advancing toward him.
It’s a tense moment as someone yells “don’t shoot it!”
“No sir! No sir!” The Sheriff’s deputy yells as the tiger crosses the road and advances on him. He backs away slowly, never breaking eye contact with the big cat.
But the last thing he wanted to do was to shoot the animal – if he could help it.
Thankfully, just as the situation was looking dire, someone comes out of one of the houses nearby.
“Get the f*** back inside. F*** you and your f***ing tiger,” the Sheriff’s deputy screams at him.
“I’ll get him,” the man who is presumably his owner says. “Don’t shoot!”
The man straddled the tiger and took him inside while Manion gave him an earful.
“He came up to the tiger himself and leaned down and kissed the tiger, and then took him by his collar,” Diane, a neighbor, told KPRC 2.
But the situation then took an even more bizarre turn.
The man came back out of the house with the tiger, who is a nine-month-old male Bengal named India, bundled the cat into a SUV, and sped off.The police gave chase but lost sight of him. Houston police said the man, identified as 26-year-old Victor Hugo Cuevas, was eventually arrested.
Carole Baskin, the founder of Big Cat Rescue and star of Nexflix’s eye-opening docu-series, Tiger King, even weighed in on the bizarre story.
She praised the off-duty deputy’s handling of the situation.
“I was so impressed with the deputy that showed up on the scene because he did exactly the right thing. And he showed amazing restraint in not shooting that tiger,” Baskin told CNN. “He kept eye contact. He backed away slowly. A tiger, if you look down, if you turn, if that neighbor had run back to his door, that triggers their instinct to kill.”
The police told CNN that the “whereabouts of the tiger are not yet known.”
To see the extraordinary sight of a tiger strolling through a suburban neighborhood, watch the video below!
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