October 07, 2003
A Defense of Urban Animal Husbandry
The city’s judgment fell swiftly on Antoine Yates. At a press conference the mayor clownishly explained, "Tigers are dangerous animals. Clearly this tiger should not have been anyplace in New York City outside of a zoo.” The local humane organizations sent representatives to condemn the keeping of wild animals in high rises. Meanwhile, the tabloids splashed lurid photos of the tiger lunging at an animal control officer who was hanging from the side of the building. It was an inevitable disaster, and it played out in the papers and the nightly news like the sad aftermath of a dream. “Police discover a 400 pound Tiger in a Harlem apartment.”
It’s not clear where Antoine Yates got a tiger, but what is known is that he raised the cub by hand, and that its presence was tolerated by the building’s residents. For at least two years, Ming shared the cramped apartment with Mr. Yates and his family. Antoine would sit with Ming on the couch and watch baseball. He would invite the neighbors over to admire his pet.
Residents of the building–blinking in the flash of press attention–were ambivalent about the tiger. Sure, it seemed a bit foolish to sanction their neighbor’s hobby, but as Jerome Applewhite was quoted as saying in the New York Times: “It was a house pet. To me that is cool.” A neighbor downstairs had complained to the housing authority about the smell of tiger urine, but what downstairs neighbor doesn’t have some kind of gripe? The general consensus is that residents accepted the tiger. The potential for tragedy he represented was outweighed by the sheer mythic resonance of his presence there.
As the tiger grew up and began to stalk through the apartment, most of the family decamped for Philadelphia, taking with them the more portable animals in Antoine’s menagerie. Antoine was left alone with the tiger and a crocodile. I can’t help but think of poor Gregor Samsa, terrible, malodorous, but still loved, pushing his family away.
Antoine tried to make the best of the situation, but eventually the tiger outgrew even his kindness, so he was compelled to move into another room in the building. He would visit the tiger daily. He’d open the door slightly and determine where the animal was, then, after assessing the creature’s mood, enter with some food. Their interaction was wary, but tender. He freshened the water and stood back as the beast ate its dinner of raw chicken, steak, and hamburger.
Say what you will about his motives, but Antoine was no fool. You can’t be an idiot and raise a tiger. He would have known that he was in too deep, that something had to give, and he surely considered moving the tiger somewhere where it could run free. But how do you take a tiger out of a high rise apartment complex? You can’t exactly fit it in a duffle bag and hop on the train. The right thing to do would have been to call animal control, but one can imagine that the animal enthusiast in him refused to admit that he had been beaten. Anyone who has ever found themselves backed in a corner by good intentions will know the feeling.
No, the tiger could not be moved, so Antoine did what people always do when faced with irrational love–he braced himself and held on. He would stand just inside the door and throw raw chickens into the apartment and watch as the big cat tore them to shreds before returning to its place next to the stove. Eventually they settled into a routine. He would pick up the meat in the morning and feed the beast twice every day. The situation was untenable, but it happened so gradually–one bad choice after another, one raw chicken at a time, each obstacle made bearable by love. Did the tiger know how fearsome it had become? Did Antoine still see the kitten that he had nursed on the couch?
The end of the affair came suddenly, as love often does. The door was open and Antoine was watching the tiger eat when suddenly a kitten rushed past the door. Antoine was a lover of animals, but Ming had become a hunter. As the cat scurried across the hall–no more than a flash of fur across the linoleum–their worlds would came apart. The tiger roared and crouched to attack. Antoine braced himself against the door frame. “No Ming, please Ming, don’t do this, not now, not today.” Ming moved towards the man who once nursed him from a bottle. Did the tiger feel anything in the prickling in his neck? Did domestication pull at his tail? It didn’t matter; he could not swallow his interior life. In one moment he became a tiger in a tiny apartment, and Antoine before him became a small man who dreamed too big. The tiger lunged, Antoine raised his arms. Their love dissolved with a roar and broken flesh and blood and sinew.
Antoine, facing charges of reckless endangerment and animal cruelty, is currently recovering in a hospital in Philadelphia. I suspect that our mayor–who hasn’t an ounce of poetry running though his veins–will see that the full force of the law is unleashed on him. But before we rush to judgment, I think it is instructive to compare Antoine’s case with that of Roy (of Las Vegas’ Siegfried and Roy) who is also recovering from a tiger attack after bopping a big cat on the nose with a microphone. Roy too created a world–perhaps an unnatural one–where man and beast lived together, and he too has been brought low by the indifference of the wild. They are holding candlelight vigils for him in Las Vegas. I think we should look at Antoine with the same kindness.
The tiger of Harlem was shipped off to a wildlife preserve in Ohio. From his hospital bed in Philadelphia, Antoine tried to explain his motivations to reporters. “I am trying to create a Garden of Eden. Something this world lacks.” Can we blame him for his utopianism? Should we mock him for being expelled from Eden? When it comes to tigers and cities the end is inevitable, who are we to shake our heads in disbelief? Better to celebrate the man who looked at a cramped apartment and saw a wildlife refuge, who lived with a tiger as a brother, who dreamed recklessly and hard, and nearly lost his arm for it.
Correction
(As it turned out – the moments leading up to the mauling were much more playful, according to this article from the NYT. Frequent visitors to this site know that everything here is made up, but in case you one of the people who found this site after googleing “Antoine Yates”, please note that brokentype is a make-shit-up operation and not a news source.)
Father waves to the intreprid Ezekial and Rapheal Dubb.
