The man who had a tiger in his room
Harlem, New York City, back in 2003. In a regular old apartment on the fifth floor of the Drew Hamilton Houses, there lived an extraordinary secret. Antoine Yates, a cab driver in his thirties, had something up his sleeve that would make your jaw drop—a 400-pound Siberian-Bengal tiger named Ming.
The Start of Something Wild
It all began innocently enough. Yates, with a penchant for exotic creatures, brought home a wee Bengal tiger cub from Minnesota’s BEARCAT Hollow Animal Park. He dubbed him Ming and had big dreams of proving that humans and wild animals could kick it together peacefully. Ming wasn’t his first rodeo with exotic pets—he’d previously owned a lion cub named Jabba, who sadly didn’t stick around long, and another sickly lion cub named Nemo, who he adopted alongside Ming.
Life in Apartment 5E
Yates turned one of his five bedrooms into Ming’s personal jungle. He even set up a sandbox for the growing tiger to frolic in and fed him a hefty diet of 20 pounds of chicken every day. But here’s the kicker—Ming wasn’t alone in this urban safari. He shared the digs with Al, a five-foot-long caiman, and a whole menagerie of other critters. The neighbors, like Jerome Applewhite, couldn’t ignore the occasional roar or the whiff of animal pee, but Yates swore up and down that Ming was a big ol’ softie—his best bud in the whole wide world.
For years, Yates managed to keep Ming’s existence on the down-low from the suits, even though the neighbors knew what was up. They heard the roars and caught whiffs of what was cooking, but Yates insisted everything was copacetic—just a guy and his big kitty living the dream.
The Big Reveal
But dreams have a way of turning sour. In September 2003, Yates bolted to the ER with some serious bite marks, swearing up and down a pit bull did him dirty. Doctors smelled something fishy (or rather, tiger-y) about his story and called in the big guns—the NYPD. On October 2, a tip-off pointed the fuzz straight to Yates’ pad.
NYPD Detective Martin Duffy still gets chills thinking about that day. They drilled holes into the neighbor’s wall to confirm the tiger and his scaly buddy Al were kicking it inside. Duffy, armed with a tranquilizer dart, rappelled down from the seventh floor like a superhero trying to save the day. But Ming wasn’t about to go down without a roar. When Duffy took his shot, Ming went ballistic, charging the window like a freight train. The whole building shook as he slammed into the wall, but eventually, the tranquilizer kicked in and the cops scooped him up. Al, the caiman, didn’t escape the party either.
Life After the Big Bust
Yates’ dream of a wild kingdom in the concrete jungle hit a brick wall. He got cuffed for reckless endangerment and did a three-month stint behind bars. Ming? He got a one-way ticket to Noah’s Lost Ark Animal Sanctuary in Ohio, where he lived out his days until kicking the bucket in 2019 from natural causes. They even gave Ming a fancy send-off at the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery upstate, complete with a stone that read, “Ming, Tiger of Harlem.”
Since then, Yates bounced around, finally settling down with his ma in Philly suburbia. Despite the fallout, he never lost his love for critters, just opting for smaller-scale pets this time around. His brush with fame didn’t change his tune either—still waving off those exotic pet big shots as clueless.
The Legacy Lives On
The story of Ming, the Harlem tiger, ain’t just another fish tale—it’s a wild ride through the gritty streets of NYC. Detective Martin Duffy still gets a kick out of retelling the tale, all nerves and adrenaline. It’s a tale that’s stuck in the city’s memory, a reminder of a time when you never knew what you’d find behind closed doors.
Yates’ attempt at blending the wild with the domestic left a mark on everyone involved, forever etching itself into the Big Apple’s lore. So next time you hear a roar echoing through the city streets, think of Ming, the tiger who dared to call Harlem home.
