HARLEM Tiger Man wins early prison release

The tiger is still being kept at Noah's Lost Ark.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A Harlem man sentenced to five months in jail after pleading guilty to keeping a tiger and an alligator in his apartment was released early from Rikers Island on Thursday.
Antoine Yates, 36, said he was freed around 6 a.m. after serving about 3 1/2 months as a result of his guilty plea in July to reckless endangerment. He said the shortened term reflected time off for good behavior.
The 400-pound tiger, Ming, is being kept at Noah's Lost Ark animal sanctuary in Berlin Center. The alligator is at another animal sanctuary in Indiana.
Yates said that he spent his jail time studying and working out and that he plans to apply for a job at the Bronx Zoo.
"I would like to further my education by studying animal science and would like one day to open my own zoo," he said.
Writing a book
Yates, dubbed the Tiger Man after his widely publicized arrest, said he has finished 500 pages of a book about his experiences and hopes they will be the basis of a documentary movie script.
He was arrested Oct. 4, 2003, at a hospital in Philadelphia, where he had gone for treatment of a deep bite on his right leg. The bite had been inflicted by the 2-year-old orange and white Siberian-Bengal tiger.
Police removed the tiger and an alligator, Al, from Yates' apartment in East Harlem.
After Yates pleaded guilty, state Supreme Court Justice Budd Goodman sentenced him in October to five months in jail and five years probation. The judge told him to get a job and not to keep wild animals.
Yates reports to a probation officer twice a month. He said he will try to get his probation term and the prohibition against keeping animals lifted.
"I'm going to try to get my tiger and my alligator back," he said. "My tiger, Ming, he's my heart."