Grandma's House

Has anybody found a tiger lately? Someone seems to have lost one.

For six months, something has been prowling the countryside along FM 3006 in northern Atascosa County, snatching up dogs, roosters and calves.

One night in early May, rancher Brian Beam was baling hay on his tractor when he says he came face-to-face with what could be the culprit: a full-grown tiger, he said, lurking along the creek running through his 27-acre property.

I gota say, if that had been me, that tractor would have needed a good hosing down. But it just gets better.

He rallied two neighbors, grabbed some guns and flashlights and took off in pursuit of the creature, which Beam now blames for the March disappearance of two of his calves.

"We never could catch up to him, but we found a bunch of hair and tracks," he said.

While searching Gallinas Creek with Beam for an hour and a half, Jake Turner, 19, said he found "huge" tracks in the mud and orange and black fur stuck in a fence that crosses the creek.

Okay, so we've got an eyewitness, huge cat tracks, and orange and black fur caught in the wire fences. Sounds like an open and shut case to me. But apparently they've hired Baghdad Bob in Atascosa County, Texas.

"We have no substantiated reports of loose tigers whatsoever," said David Soward, chief deputy at the Atascosa County Sheriff's Department. "Everything I've heard is like fourth- and fifth-hand information. And none of this has come directly to the Sheriff's Office."

I guess he's waiting for the tiger to knock on his door and turn himself in.