BROWNSVILLE — The cat’s out of the bag and recovering safely at Gladys Porter Zoo.
Border Patrol agents recovered a tiger cub abandoned by smugglers near the border fence in Brownsville.
Border Patrol Agent Marshall Maynard discovered the 2-month-old tiger cub motionless in a black duffel bag Monday after responding when three people who crossed the Rio Grande abandoned the animal and fled back to Mexico before the federal agents could close in on their location.
“I responded to some traffic, and that’s when I responded to a duffel bag just sitting on the ground,” Maynard said. “So that’s when I approached the bag, opened it up and I immediately knew that I had found something special.”
Maynard said he expected to find drugs in the black duffel bag.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what it would be,” Maynard said. “That was the last thing I actually expected.”
Maynard said he immediately radioed his colleagues to let them know he found a tiger cub, which was sedated.
Border Patrol Agent Juan Corona responded to Maynard’s location, and the pair placed the tiger cub in the back of Maynard’s vehicle for his safety “and to get some air on it because you could tell that the animal had suffered.”
Yesterday afternoon, the cub energetically paced back and forth in its holding cell at Gladys Porter Zoo’s hospital facility. A red toy sat near a blue blanket on which the tiger slept the night before.
Gladys Porter Zoo’s senior veterinarian, Thomas DeMaar, said the cub’s temperature was 107 degrees when the Border Patrol agents brought the animal in for treatment.
“It is doing well. It’s quite playful,” DeMaar said. “We’ve discovered that it knows what a bottle is, so it’s obviously been hand-raised. It’s in reasonably good body condition after (Monday’s) ordeal.”
DeMaar said Gladys Porter Zoo’s animal hospital staff provided the tiger cub with IV fluids and cooled its body temperature.
“And over the next couple of hours, it recovered,” DeMaar said. “And, well, now it seems to be quite happy.”
The duffel bag containing the tiger cub was slightly larger than the animal itself and had no air holes in it, DeMaar said.
Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Manuel Padilla Jr. said the discovery is a first for him in his 32 years with the agency.
“I’ve never seen a tiger being smuggled across, though I’ve seen horses, cattle, chickens, all kinds of animals, parrots, all sorts of stuff,” Padilla said. “I’ll tell you from my perspective, the biggest thing is we were able to not only rescue him, but we were able to save that tiger.”
Padilla said any kind of smuggler, including exotic animal smugglers, only have an interest in profit.
“So you will see the smuggling of parrots, anything that is illegal and there is a demand for in the United States, or vice versa, smuggling from the United States into Mexico,” Padilla said.
The last time Customs and Border Protection seized a tiger at a port of entry was August 2017 in Otay Mesa, California, Padilla said.
In that instance, CBP arrested an 18-year-old man who arrived at the Otay Mesa port of entry after CBP officers searched the vehicle and discovered the tiger cub lying on the floor, according to a CBP press release.
And more than 20 years ago, CBP agents working at the San Ysidro port of entry in California intercepted a smuggling attempt to move a tiger cub from California into Mexico, according to CBP. That tiger was later named “Blanca” and lived for many years in the San Diego Safari Park.
In fact, it’s far more common for smuggling organizations to illicitly move tigers south from the U.S. into Mexico, DeMaar explained.
Last December, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game wardens seized a tiger cub from an Edinburg man who was trying to sell it online. That tiger is at Gladys Porter Zoo, where it is recovering, and that investigation is ongoing.
“In 2008, we had what we call the Walmart tigers,” DeMaar said. “There were six small tigers … who in fact were being shipped from the United States back into Mexico without proper paperwork, and those were confiscated.”
Three of those tigers could be seen yesterday in their enclosure at Gladys Porter Zoo, as they still live there.
In another case, Gladys Porter Zoo took control of four tigers from a couple going through a divorce.
The tiger cub found Monday will be the 12th tiger cub the zoo has taken custody of during the past 10 years.
“We’re going to try and find it a home. The tiger at this time has been signed over to the zoo from the government, I believe,” DeMaar said. “And so it is up to us now in a sanctuary mode to find it some place to live. I don’t know that it would live here at the zoo. But that’s our next task.”
As of mid-afternoon Tuesday the tiger cub hadn’t been named, and zoo staff was still working to positively identify its species.
