Tiger placed in local sanctuary

The tiger will be quarantined before meeting the sanctuary's other 45 cats.
STAFF/WIRE REPORTS
BERLIN CENTER -- A tiger taken from a Manhattan apartment after biting its owner will have to get used to grass, trees and birds at its new home here, its director said.
A veterinarian was to examine the tiger today at Noah's Lost Ark, 8424 Bedell Road. The vet will examine it through the bars of a transfer cage rather than sedate it again, center director Ellen Whitehouse said.
The licensed facility takes abused and neglected exotic animals and warns that wild animals can't be tamed.
"We should just stop letting people buy them," Whitehouse said. "We shouldn't be breeding them in the United States."
An alligator also in the apartment was to be sent to an Indiana preserve.
Their owner is recovering from wounds from the more than 400-pound cat.
Police said Antoine Yates, 31, would face reckless endangerment charges after he gets out of a hospital in Philadelphia, where he fled. He was listed in good condition.
Yates said the tiger grabbed him and "tore open my whole leg down to the bone." Yates told Philadelphia TV station KYW in a phone interview from his hospital bed that he was "trying to create a Garden of Eden, something that this world lacks."
Safe haven
A team of animal control officers, police and Bronx Zoo workers used a camera to track the animals in Yates' fifth-floor apartment in a Harlem housing project before tranquilizing and removing them Saturday.
Wes Artope, director of the city's animal shelters, said the tiger, an orange and white Siberian-Bengal mix, had been kept in the apartment since he was a 6-week-old cub. The 20-month-old tiger now weighs at least 425 pounds, Artope said.
The tiger and 5-foot alligator, both in good condition, were taken first to a local shelter, then to a Long Island animal sanctuary before authorities sought homes.
"Clearly this tiger should not have been in any place in New York City outside of a zoo," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sunday.
Noah's Lost Ark, an all-volunteer organization, currently has about 125 exotic animals. The safe haven is open to the public on weekends from May 1 through Oct. 31.
The sanctuary isn't equipped for reptiles, Whitehouse said. Lorain County animal trainer and rescuer Sam Mazzola, who transported the animals, said he would take the alligator to a sanctuary in Indiana this week.
'Terrified' tiger
The "terrified" tiger was roaring and snarling as he came out of a tranquilizer haze in what Whitehouse believed was his first time in a cage, she said.
"He's scared; he's never been outside," Whitehouse said. "He just really needs time to be left alone."
The tiger will be quarantined in his own outdoor enclosure for 30 to 45 days -- with 50-gallon plastic drums from a nearby butter factory as toys -- before any attempts to introduce him to the sanctuary's other 45 big cats.
Yates was taken into custody Saturday night at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, police said.
Authorities believe he went to Philadelphia after checking out of a New York hospital on Friday with bites to his arm and leg. Officers responded to a call on Wednesday that Yates had been bitten by a dog but found the truth through phone tips and neighbors.
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