r/pics • u/YoMikeeHey • 2d ago
An NYC police officer comes face-to-face with Ming, a 350 lb tiger secretly living in an apartment
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u/dashinny 2d ago
How do you keep a tiger in a nyc apartment without it going ballistic after being cooped up in a cramped space for so long?
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u/elkmeateater 2d ago
Apparently there was a nursing home across the street and residents would report seeing a tiger in the apartment but the staff thought it was just dementia.
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u/missymaypen 2d ago
I've learned to not discount them. Even if it doesn't make sense. Patient kept saying her husband was in the bathroom and had been in there awhile. So somebody needed to check on him. Her husband had been gone for years.
Checked the bathroom and didn't see anything. Started to leave and her a noise like a leg or something hitting a wall. Man was hiding in the bathtub. He was another patient's relative. Came to visit his relative and apparently hid somewhere when visiting time was over.
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u/Madpony 2d ago
Why was he hiding? You stopped the story too soon!
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u/missymaypen 2d ago
Sorry. My boss was staring at me. I honestly don't know. I would assume either he was a pervert or going for the medicine room. We had another one that took meds at one point and passed out in the med room(walk in closet sized room full of narcotics). We also had one that climbed in bed with a patient and he was discovered when she bit him and wouldn't let go.
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u/PureHeartsEroticArts 2d ago
he was discovered when she bit him and wouldn't let go.
Don't mess with grandma. She's like a snapping turtle. XD
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u/CopperbeardTom 2d ago
My son is in a children's hospital for the past week. On Sunday a man wandered in and slept in one of the empty beds.
A ~30 year old dude in a children's ward. He was looking for meds (or found them) and passed out. A nurse found him and they called a "code black".
Then he ran out to another courtyard, and the staff locked all the doors so he was stuck. He was smashing on the glass, scaring kids and parents.
Police showed up a few minutes later.
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u/Drix22 2d ago
I had a patient in an alcohol rehab. Hard core alcoholic, like drink the hand sanitizer hard core.
Anyhow, one day we find a empty bottle of jack under his bed. Patient says it's not his and accuses a staff member he doesn't like of planting it there.
Patient gets put on a 1:1 because he's drinking bottles of booze somehow and needs to be monitored, this goes on for several weeks with no further incedent.
Comes off 1:1, same shit happens. Back on to 1:1.
One night my boss is in the building way past hours (like 2am), and his 1:1, the guy he doesn't like reeks of alcohol and is passed out in his chair. Patient wakes up, sees my boss, sees his 1:1 and says "Told you"
A bottle of booze was found in his locker.
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u/remainderrejoinder 2d ago
Interviewer: What do you think qualifies you to work in an alcohol rehab?
Interviewee: Well I have a lot of experience with alcohol.
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u/Pur1wise 2d ago
Did nobody think to check the patient to see if he had alcohol in his system before putting him on watch?
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u/The_Original_Gronkie 2d ago
My Dad had dementia, and I cope with the memories of those scary few years by remembering the funny stories.
Like the time he was sitting at the kitchen breakfast bar talking. I was watching TV with my back to him. I turned down the TV and said "What was that, Dad?" He said, "I was just talking to that woman over there." There was nobody else in the kitchen, so I asked him "Where?" He looked back and said "She's gone."
"What did she look like?"
"Um, she was very attractive."
"Really? What did she want?"
He was a bit flustered, but said "Well, she likes men, I'll tell you that!"
So apparently attractive women were flirting with him in his old age, so that was nice.
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u/redzmangrief 2d ago
Sadly this is why a lot of elderly and mental patients end up assaulted. No one believes them
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u/petawmakria 2d ago
Apparently there was a nursing home across the street
How bad is it that my first thought reading this was that the tiger hunted nursing home residents?
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u/schmidtzkrieg 2d ago
There's a resident at the building I work in who was always telling us how he's worried about people breaking into his room, he's seeing people climbing in the windows. We all wrote it off as paranoia until we found out that the boyfriend of the person in the next room was legitimately scaling three floors of the building to climb in her window.
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u/keziahw 2d ago
I misread and had a major wtf moment until I realized the building you're talking about probably isn't a nursing home
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u/theonemangoonsquad 2d ago
Ikr, I was thinking damn, this boyfriend is limber af for 75 years old.
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u/vivaaprimavera 2d ago
Dismissing that sort of thing usually is not a good idea. I read about a case where a patient described is symptoms in such a way that the staff there sent him straight to the psychiatrist. Luckily the doctor was in good mood and decided "I want to see that" and sent him to the right service. The guy said the he was "shiting black birds" and was bleeding from the stomach.
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u/Rude-Parsley2910 2d ago
Very different story but along the same lines of not dismissing something crazy. so my mom works in the front office at an elementary school, and a student that is something like 90% blind said he saw a llama getting shot at recess. we live in a pretty suburban area so nobody believed the kid, but my mom decided to call the security guard and have them walk the edge of the playground. turns out just on the other side of the fence is a farm with a llama, and a vet was shooting it with a tranquilizer to sedate it for an examination.
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u/Mulley-It-Over 2d ago
Glad your mom believed the student and had the security guard check on it. She did right by the student. Now people aren’t going to go around thinking the student is saying crazy things and talking about him behind his back.
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u/GrinderMonkey 2d ago
The long term care industry is kind of shitty around a lot of its edges. My wife's mother appeared to be completely nonverbal and checked out if you weren't really paying attention, but she was still pretty sharp under her disability. A few of us who had spent years caring for her could understand her entirely.. because she appeared non verbal and not very cognizant, she was subjected to a variety of neglect and outright abuse, and that's with us paying very close attention.
Please talk to, and believe your elderly and disabled cohorts. Things are worse for them than you would like to believe.
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u/flyingace1234 2d ago
I’m reminded of a post a while back on ask Reddit about what to do if you think a child is faking illness. It was good to see the consensus was “take them seriously anyway “. I know dementia can be frustrating to work with but I can only imagine how it must be like to live with it.
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u/riotousgrowlz 2d ago
Whenever my grandma with dementia was constipated she thought she was in labor and was very concerned about being unwed (she was long widowed). It was very sad.
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u/BoilerMaker11 2d ago edited 2d ago
I went to the tiger's wiki page. Apparently it was a 5 bedroom apartment. Not saying that that's anywhere close to large enough to have a damn tiger not freak out. But just that you can assume the place wasn't the box type loft apartment that's only 500 square feet, like you do when you think of when you think of an NYC apartment not being leased by somebody super wealthy.
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u/TwoTinyTrees 2d ago
Judging by the way it is clawing at the window after that meal on a rope hanging in front of him, I’m guessing you don’t.
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u/h8speech 2d ago
After being darted, Ming charged at the window from which Duffy had fired, breaking it, then retreated further into the apartment.
Fuck that
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u/TripleSingleHOF 2d ago
Imagine how big a piece of shit you must be to keep an animal like this in a tiny apartment like that.
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u/TheEastSideStory 2d ago edited 2d ago
Pretty sure he had a gator too… this was like 2004
Edit: my bad it was 2003
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u/TomboBreaker 2d ago
I don't understand how they don't get ate when they come home
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u/goodcleanchristianfu 2d ago
The tiger was discovered because it bit him and he sought treatment at a hospital. To be fair, it took three years before the tiger took a bite, and even then it was only because the owner was stopping the tiger from chasing a housecat. Ming was pretty well behaved.
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u/FabulousSOB 2d ago
Guy's got some serious balls trying to dicipline a tiger in chase mode.
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u/powerangerpink 2d ago
No shit! Chasing the house cat. Lord how delusional was his owner??? Poor Ming. Can you imagine that scene, though? Romping through the apartment chasing the house cat.
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u/LateToSapphos 2d ago
Can you imagine being the neighbor downstairs
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u/guynamedjames 2d ago
If memory serves the downstairs neighbor complained of cat urine coming from the ceiling. Tigers probably need more of a 5 gallon bucket than a litter box
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u/orange_sherbetz 2d ago
The only thing that shocks me about this story - is that the owner also had a cat???
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u/TheLastSamurai101 2d ago
The shocking part for me was that his mother was babysitting children in the same apartment...
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u/LastAphrodesiac 2d ago
Tigers get surprisingly lazy when well-fed, their behaviour is incredibly similar to a housecat, the danger isn't them killing you for food, but doing so accidentally during play, then eating you after
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u/vikrant1993 2d ago
“Loud growling noises could be heard through the door of the apartment and the officer declined to enter.”
I read that line from the Wikipedia article on the discovery of the Tiger…I bet the same reaction was had by every person walking by his apartment
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u/brocahantas 2d ago
Yeah how is this not caught and reported by neighbors sooner?!
You’d hear everything in every city apartment I’ve lived in. Can’t imagine the noise a fucking tiger would make in there.
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u/RegisterOk9743 2d ago
Neighbors probably convinced themselves it was the tv or something, because someone having a tiger in there just sounds too far fetched to be true.
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u/one_love_silvia 2d ago
How the fuck do you feed a fucking tiger AND a gator?
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u/Winniezepoohscroptop 2d ago
The tiger alone was getting fed 20lbs of chicken every day. The food budget must have been massive.
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u/bigspur 2d ago
Fun fact—he sued the City for removing the tiger from the apartment too. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna14235939
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u/Upside_Down_999 2d ago
A man who sued the city for entering his apartment without a search warrant after he was mauled by his 450-pound pet Siberian tiger demonstrated a lot of nerve in taking the city to court, a judge said as he threw out the lawsuit.
Police removed the 10-foot-long tiger, Ming, and an alligator, Al, from Yates' East Harlem apartment. Yates served 3 1/2 months in jail after pleading guilty to reckless endangerment.
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u/Pyotr_WrangeI 2d ago
I should be outraged, but I'm too impressed by logistical skills of a person who somehow managed to keep a giant tiger and a giant crocodile in the same New York apartment? Legitimately, how do you pull something like this off? Sure it didn't end well for him, but how the hell do you sneak 2 apex predators into a megapolis apartment and keep them there for any length of time? Are we sure they didn't hide an orca in their basement somewhere?
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u/Deesing82 2d ago
not one comment responding to you has mentioned the most impressive logistical issue he dealt with--removing the waste of a 450lbs animal on a daily basis.
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u/AreYouABadfishToo_ 2d ago
he drugged the shit out of tiger. That’s what all big cat owners do. Especially when they let people come and pet the tigers. The animals have to be sedated for human interaction. It’s fucked up. I would never go to big cat petting zoo.
All exotic/wild animals owners likely drug their animals. Remember the lady in CT who kept a pet chimpanzee? And the chimp snapped one day and mauled her friend nearly to death? Turned out the owner was giving the chimp xanax and other things.
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u/xl-imperium-lx 2d ago
Xanax and wine… if you know anything about pills (especially Xanax) and wine then you know the chimp was out there mentally. Poor dude
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u/angrydeuce 2d ago
The whole story was so fucked up. After the cops unloaded however many rounds into it, it crawled back into its cage before dying, likely the only place it felt safe. Just wrecks me knowing that poor monkey obviously was confused, didn't know what the fuck was going on, and then died without the only human he knew with him.
Obviously what happened to the woman who had her face literally ripped off was horrific, don't get me wrong. Just so many levels of fucked up, especially as this creature was treated like a human child, it more or less was a human child mentally, and got gunned down because it's owner was a fuckin piece of shit.
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u/Imaginary-Bread1829 2d ago
I heard the sudden switch in his behavior was due to the Xanax she was giving him. I think she was getting it from her doctor none the less. Monkeys shouldn’t be kept as pets but the reason he attacked the lady suddenly is probably due to her just being a terrible pet owner, so she has his blood on her hands, along with the blame of her friend’s horrific accident
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u/JumboJumboShrimp 2d ago
Your whole comment is on point, but since it's reddit and we're all pedantic assholes just FYI chimps are apes. Monkeys have tails, apes don't.
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u/RedDiscipline 2d ago
My understanding is that the chimp is suspected of being in withdrawal from Xanax at the time of the attack, which if true, it's like no fucking wonder
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u/stoneandglass 2d ago
Nothing for animal cruelty huh?
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u/BigBootyRiver 2d ago
In NY state animal cruelty may have been a lesser sentence since the max is 6 months and most people get off with a fine. It also is harder to prove if both animals were at least physically healthy aka well fed
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u/Boba_Brett 2d ago edited 2d ago
"We both had our freedom, but now we're both caged," he said of himself and Ming the day he was jailed.
No, you are the one that caged a damn tiger in an apartment! What a real piece of shit.
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u/rioting_mime 2d ago
That was the line that cemented the mental illness. Guy really thought this tiger was living its best life with him in an NYC apartment. What a psycho.
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u/TJtherock 2d ago
Legit exotic animal hoarding. A tiger sanctuary near me got it's start from someone with a shipping container with 20+ lions and tigers. turpentine creek wildlife refuge. The animals were rescued and needed somewhere to go. Only half of them survived though. And the lady went out and did the whole thing again.
There are some illegal things that don't make sense to me. Like, I don't know exactly where to buy hard drugs but I know where/who I can start with. But I have no idea who you talk to about buying tigers.
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u/Nolubrication 2d ago
Roadside zoos like the ones in Tiger King, I reckon. Just show up with enough cash in hand and those shady fucks will sell you anything you want.
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u/Jamoras 2d ago
He kept a tiger in his apartment. Did you expect him to be well-adjusted and rational?
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u/Boba_Brett 2d ago
Fair enough. I shouldn't be surprised in the least bit at this point.
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u/Glubglubguppy 2d ago
In a New York apartment, no less. You're lucky if you get a broom closet to yourself there.
My big question is, how did he survive being in such a small space with a tiger????
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u/royalsocialist 2d ago
Probably fed it. If you raise a tiger as a baby and keep it from being hungry it would have no reason to be aggressive toward you.
Of course, this dude got mauled so something went wrong. Could just have been an accident, though the fact that tiger was raised in a NYC apartment probably didn't help his behavioural traits/mental health. Oh, and there was a crocodile?
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u/John_cCmndhd 2d ago
Of course, this dude got mauled so something went wrong. Could just have been an accident
I mean, house cats sometimes accidentally scratch you when trying to play, imagine what happens when the cat is bigger than you
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u/kevnmartin 2d ago
Reddit headline is wrong. The article says the tiger was 450 lbs.
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u/DudeWithAnAxeToGrind 2d ago
"We both had our freedom, but now we're both caged," he said of himself and Ming the day he was jailed.
LOL. That's a bold statement. From somebody who kept a tiger caged inside a tiny apartment.
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u/setibeings 2d ago
Fuck this guy, the fact that he's the one who was bit was dumb luck on his part. A couple months in jail, and the animals being taken to a better place to live was the best outcome he could have hoped for given what might have happened if the tiger escaped.
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u/floog 2d ago
I've heard from the owner of the Wild Animal Sanctuary (just East of Denver, well worth a visit) that there are more tigers in private residences...in Texas, than in the wild. He has some seriously messed up stories of rescues he's done. Guy really does have an enormous heart.
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u/jeshwesh 2d ago
My uncle used to take me to exotic animal auctions in Missouri when I was growing up, and it was always amazing the animals you'd see for sale. There would be what looked like a somewhat regular cow (but from Asia) and then they'd just wheel out a black bear in a cage, and then rheas on leashes. The people buying them just looked like regular farmers. No Joe Exotic or Cruella de Vil eccentrics. I could see Texas being rife with private collectors
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u/gdo01 2d ago
How do you get them into the country or into a city? You can’t expect UPS to just leave one at your door
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u/jeshwesh 2d ago
Well I don't know all of the Federal rules and laws surrounding the importation of exotic animals, but I never go the impression they were particularly strict. People would just have lions and tigers, and the restrictions around that seemed to fall to the states they were in; which is probably why certain states have more collectors than others. As far as logistics, most of the animals I remember seeing were just in regular livestock trailers. The thing is, the people buying and selling these animals didn't seem like professionals or anything. They were just farmers (like my uncle) and so the housing and contraptions they used to raise them were just stuff they came up with. I was a kid, so all of this seemed pretty cool at the time, but in retrospect there are probably a lot of miserable animals out there living and dying in less than decent conditions.
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u/awpdownmid 2d ago
These animals aren't imported any more, they're bred domestically. It's the same way the puppy mills work except they're tigers.
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u/MikoSkyns 2d ago
Ohio has a fuckload of tigers in private residences too.
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u/stlmick 2d ago
When I lived in Cincinnati in '93, there was a house down the street that had a female lion that was almost full grown(I'm guessing). Would see it staring out the upstairs window when I'd ride my bicycle down the street.
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u/nover3 2d ago
Had a fever dream once of a lion in an apartment building and on its floor I was trying to walk past the room it was housed in but the door was open and the lion just kept Starring at me, and some point the sheer fright was enough to wake me the fuck up , my heart was literally pounding.
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u/cgn-38 2d ago
There is actually some sort of thing going on with a tiger when you get up close and lock eyes with one. Their whole deal is mesmerizing to me. Probably because we as apes are a prey species of tiger. The whole facial stripe thing is like one of those mesmerizing line drawing illusions. Make you freeze in confusion just long enough to get jumped.
One and done on that experience, thank you very much.
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u/Codeofconduct 2d ago
I believe we have a lot of exotic animals in MT as well due to relaxed laws people move here with explicit intentions of owning wild animals sometimes.
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u/uberjach 2d ago
How are you gonna spend 1000$ on meat and afford a large apartment as well? It was either the tiger or a large apartment...
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u/microgiant 2d ago edited 2d ago
That's crazy, how did a tiger afford rent in NYC?
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u/OldeFortran77 2d ago •
It was rent-controlled. The Tiger's grandmother used to live there.
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u/Birdie_Num_Num 2d ago
The residuals from the TV work he did with Frosties back in the ‘80s come in pretty handy too
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u/gerryt32 2d ago
Frosties
TIL they're not called "Frosted Flakes" everywhere. Does Tony still sound American in Frosties adverts?
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u/Wpgjetsfan19 2d ago
I don’t have a dog because I feel bad making it live in an apartment and this asshole has a tiger.
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u/Lindaspike 2d ago
AND a 5 foot alligator! check out the link to the NY times story!
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u/cjoll4 2d ago
Seems legit. If you have a mouse problem you get a cat. If you have a gator problem you get a proportionally larger cat.
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u/BiBoFieTo 2d ago
I feel so bad for that poor animal.
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u/BlorseTheHorse 2d ago
it was tranqulized and taken somewhere safe if i remember correctly
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u/DudeWithAnAxeToGrind 2d ago
Both tiger and the alligator were transferred to an animal rescue in Ohio. This was back in 2006. The Tiger died in 2019. Tigers live about 8-10 years in the wild, but can get as old as 20 in captivity. So more than likely it simply died of old age. Animal rescues for big cats can vary a lot; hopefully he ended up in a good one and lived much better life than being crammed in a apartment.
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u/Beatsy 2d ago
Shoutout Armand Hammer
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u/chocolatebabyman27 2d ago
Man, nothing feels better than seeing people recognize music on a scale like this that I thought was pretty niche. Shout-out to you for fucking with good music
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u/Birdie_Num_Num 2d ago
Tiger: “I need a million dollars and a helicopter or the hostage gets it”
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u/greentshirtman 2d ago
"Your "hostage" is an alligator named "Al". We are fine with the idea of you killing them."
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u/Nomadic100 2d ago
Lads.... Take this rifle back and bring me a bucket of catnip and a BIG ball of yarn.
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u/BornInBigD 2d ago
Imagine the size of the litter box!
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u/_Weatherwax_ 2d ago
The smell of the litterbox.
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u/bingbano 2d ago
I worked at a zoo, in horticulture, with Bengal tigers. Their waste smells horrible. Ocelotes (another type of cat) seriously has the worst smelling waste I've ever smelled.
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u/BluEyesWhitPrivilege 2d ago
Do the Ocelots remember you?
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u/bingbano 2d ago
None of the animals do. I worked in horticulture. They only ever saw me through cages. I would into exhibits when the animals were off, unless they were not harmful (giant torts, and for some reason the emu/deer/lama exhibit). That emu though was a horny bastard and would try to mount you which is fucking terrifying. Most zoo animals don't interact with people directly. We did have a singing dog the keepers would walk around back areas. She was tamer then some dogs I've met.
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u/fokye 2d ago
You're gonna have to elaborate on the singing dog thing jaja
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u/bingbano 2d ago
Well she was really old. We took all the dogs off exhibit prior to me starting. The dog in question would often go on walks with a harness and leash. She was pretty mellow and friendly. She always made me feel nervous because she might be tame but still a wild dog.
If you are just curious what a singing dog is. They are a subspecies of wild dog with unique calls and such. Kinda looks like a dingo
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u/fezzikola 2d ago
It was mostly showtunes, just trust me don't dare ask for old macdonald
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u/Mega-Steve 2d ago
Hauling out big sacks of cat shit, too. You ain't getting tiger dookie down the pipes unless you run it through a Cuisinart
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u/STerrier666 2d ago edited 2d ago
I remember this being on the news when I was in my 20s in the early 2000s, there was also an Alligator and a Python in the flat and if I remember correctly there was a 4 year old kid living in there with his mum.
Edit : it was 2003, here's a link for more info. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/nyregion/ming-tiger-harlem-nyc.html#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16746640995694&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F04%2F18%2Fnyregion%2Fming-tiger-harlem-nyc.html
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u/Arcade1980
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Ming lived to be about 19 at an animal sanctuary in Ohio. He passed away in 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_of_Harlem
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u/heroinsteve 2d ago
It’s not until you’re dangling from a bungee cord next to a window with a hungry 350lb tiger growling at you through a window that you begin to question if you made the right career choice.
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u/snoweel 2d ago
I'm trying to picture the set of circumstances that make approaching the apartment by rope the right way to handle this situation.
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u/The-Holy-Sheep-14 2d ago
“Right Steve, we need you to abseil down the side of this 150M building till you come face to face with the 350lb tiger. Here’s a hard hat for your safety”
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u/Regguls864 2d ago
I'd rather be safe and secure on a rappelling rope looking through a gated window than try to enter through a 36-inch door you can't see behind. Less dangerous for the animal too because there is only one officer shooting a tranquilizer from a safe distance. If they entered through a door the tiger might rush before the tranquilizer could be fired and backup officers would be forced to shoot and kill.
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u/La_Jalapena 2d ago
Just read the wiki article and it's the most ridiculous thing ever.
Dude also had an alligator in the apartment and his mom would babysit children there.
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u/Barryzuckerkorn_esq 2d ago
Anyone remember when the tiger got loose from forest park and was walking through traffic on the Jackie Robinson pkwy?
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u/BaggySpandex 2d ago
You see the size of the rats here? Just saying I understand it.
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u/A_Martian_Potato 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because I haven't seen anyone else say it:
He was rescued and lived at an animal sanctuary until his death from natural causes in 2019.
Good end to the story.