Bob and I were driving back from seeing a musical and he needed to stop at our local Lowes store to get a couple pieces of lumber. I just waited in the car. I was sitting there bored and looked to my left and saw a red pickup under the protected area by the store. There was a cage like covering on the back and a sign on the side of the truck that said something like Danger, Stand Back. I saw some people standing by the back of the truck looking at something. They walked away and I saw the head of something so I got out of the car. About then Bob came back with his boards and I said “follow me”. He thought I saw someone I knew. Nope. This is what we saw. Yep, a full grown tiger.
Her name is Gwen and she is 14 years old and she lives with a family, not a zoo. The guy that has her raised her from a baby and has taught her 16 tricks and takes her to Clemson games in a roll out cage. Clemson teams is the Tigers. He had her in the truck because he had to take her to the vet. She has a large enclosed space at her house. She was absolutely beautiful. I have never had a chance to see a tiger that close up for so long. I was really stunned at how pretty her markings were.
I have mixed feelings about any animal that is caged. Hope she is happy and treated well. The guy that has her said he just bought a 1000 pounds of chicken from Wal Mart to feed her. Sorry the photo isn’t better. He said he will be opening a pet store and will have her at the store.
That’s pretty incredible! I’ve been to Lowe’s plenty of times here recently, and the most exciting thing I ran into was a suger-hyped girl scout aggressively hawking her cookies (with free samples, no less). :P