The article says, “A tiger that was missing for a week after being spotted roaming around a Houston neighbourhood has been found, police confirmed. India, the nine-month-old Bengal tiger, was turned into police on Saturday and is said to be in good health.”
Would/should you really call the police if you see a tiger? Instead of the wildlife people? I recall a story about someone in California who saw a mountain lion in a residential area at night, called the police, and the police killed the animal.
The couple of occasions I was in time and place to run across an animal the wildlife agency was interested in [sorry, no tigers], it never occurred to me to call the coppers.
The story above is more complicated since it involves criminal activity and not merely endangered species, so of course the police are going to be involved at various levels, but for the actual animal wrangling?
The animal was spotted out on the streets on 9 May. When officers arrived at the scene, a man put the tiger into an SUV and drove off, police said.
Houston Police attempted to follow the vehicle but lost sight of it a short time later.
[ . . . ]
The alleged owner, Hugo Cuevas, was arrested several days later for evading arrest. At the time of the incident, Mr Cuevas was already on bail for a murder charge.
[ . . . ]
Late on Saturday, police said at a news conference that the animal was turned over to officers by Mr Cuevas’ wife Giorgiana.
So apparently somebody did call the police when they saw the tiger loose on the street; but this wasn’t the call that led to the police ending up with the tiger. The tiger was at that point accompanied by a human who took it away when he saw the police coming; the police didn’t catch the tiger themselves, it was later turned over by a family member.
Why she turned the tiger over to the police instead of to an animal rescue is unclear; though it might have had to do with her husband being under arrest.
I would guess that whoever called the police on May 9 just had that number handy but didn’t know where to reach animal rescue (as has already been suggested), or didn’t think of it – some people would only think of possible danger to humans and not think of, or not care about, danger to the cat.
As a Californian, I could imagine having a different reaction if I saw a mountain lion or bear - animals that are native to CA and just wandered down from a nearby mountain - as opposed to a tiger, an animal that clearly shouldn’t be wandering around California. But as stated I’d probably call 911 either way.
What wildlife people? Around these parts, Animal Control is a unit of the police department anyway, and the state Wildlife & Parks offices with published phone numbers keep regular office hours (M-F, 8-4:30) and wouldn’t be available for emergencies. (Presumably the emergency dispatchers have access to unpublished numbers for after-hours, but that’s not something ordinary citizens can call.)
I can’t imagine anyone here calling any other number than 999.
This can lead to some embarrassment though;
Police are trying to trace the owner of a life-sized tiger toy which sparked a major police alert in Hampshire over fears a real animal was on the loose.
Officers were deployed and a helicopter was scrambled with specialist thermal imaging cameras over the field, near Hedge End, on Saturday afternoon.
The scare stopped play at the Rose Bowl cricket ground for 20 minutes.
Hampshire police said the toy was being treated as lost property but they were investigating whether it was a hoax.
A couple of days ago, a friend called me to help rescue an injured kitty from a subterranean parking lift. At some point, one of the people present called the police. The first couple of cops started calling to see who could help, because what else were they supposed to do? At one point there were three squad cars in front of the building. It was surreal. The cat was eventually liberated, though. They mentioned that they do, in fact, get such animal-related calls from time to time.
