o, did Tiger Man enjoy “Tiger King?”
“I was turned off by it,” said Antoine Yates, who became known as New York City’s Tiger Man long before the wild popularity of Netflix’s documentary mini-series. “It just shows how ignorant these so-called exotic animal lovers can be.”
Mr. Yates also got momentarily famous for keeping a full-grown tiger, this one named Ming. But rather than the more rural settings favored by Joe Exotic and the show’s other big-cat enthusiasts, he kept Ming in his Harlem apartment, for more than two years.
In 2001, Mr. Yates, then a 31-year-old construction worker, brought the 8-week-old cub to his sprawling home in a Harlem housing project.
Ming quickly went from bottle feeding to consuming 20 pounds of chicken thighs a day, which Mr. Yates would heft home each morning from a local supermarket. And in less than three years, the Siberian-Bengal mix grew into a 425-pound behemoth.
The authorities eventually discovered Ming in 2003. They subdued and removed him, along with a five-foot-long alligator named Al that Mr. Yates kept in a fiberglass tank in the apartment.
Both animals were relocated to an Ohio sanctuary, where Ming died from natural causes in February 2019. Mr. Yates was arrested and served a brief stint in jail for illegally keeping an animal.
I remember this!
Where’s the doc on that
