Ming and Al in Harlem - A Love Story

Ming bored with all the unwarranted attention he's receiving lately for living from OLD Harlem.

My commentary in italics.

"It Was a Room with a Zoo"
From the New York Daily News
6 October 2003

A woman who shared a Harlem apartment with a 425-pound tiger said yesterday she was terrified at first - but soon got used to living with the man-eater down the hall.

Drugs.

Caroline Domingo told the Daily News she couldn't believe her eyes when she spotted the big cat roaming free in the apartment where she and her husband rented a room from tiger-owner Antoine Yates, 37.

Drugs.

"I walked in the door and [the tiger] was standing there looking at me," recalled Domingo, 49, a seamstress. "I said, 'I know I'm not seeing this. I know that wasn't a tiger.'

Drugs.

"He turned around and looked at me like I was a damn fool," she said.

She was a fool.

But eventually, she said, "We all became family."

Family? With a tiger?

Al wanted to move to NEW Harlem, but you know Ming, she wanted to be down with her homies.

Her amazing account came a day after cops removed the Bengal-Siberian tiger named Ming.

I leave for one day...and some brother who wanted to be cool, owns a tiger in the projects...but wait there's more! If you act now you can also own your very own alligator, absolutely free!

It also came amid questions of how a tiger and an alligator could have lived in the Drew Hamilton public housing complex for nearly two years without the city having a clue.

Somebody knew something, trust me. A damn tiger and alligator live in my building and I don't know about it? Nigga, pleeeeeeze!

"You wonder what goes on," Mayor Bloomberg said. "You can't write a book about this."

Bloomberg is now trying figure out a a way to tax the tiger and alligator.

Domingo told The News she got used to living with Ming, who played in a custom sandpit and gobbled 25 chicken thighs a day in the fifth-floor flat on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., between 141st and 142nd Sts.

I live about 12 blocks away from Animal Kingdom.

The carnivorous beast was friendly and once gave her a hug with its declawed front paws.

How sweet. What she realize is that he was high. "Yo, baby," Ming purred, "wassyo name?"

"I didn't have a bruise or mark on me," said Domingo, who moved into the apartment earlier this year and was staying with friends yesterday. "I was scared but I wasn't scared."

Because she was high.

Impurrfect family

The menagerie began to unravel on Wednesday when Ming mauled Yates as he tried to stop him from attacking a pet kitten.

A tiger, alligator and kitten, oh my!

Tipsters later told cops about the tiger, and police launched a commando-style raid to subdue Ming on Saturday.

No comment.

Both Ming and a 5-1/2-foot caiman alligator named Al were headed yesterday to an Ohio wildlife preserve, where they will be checked out for a month.

Ming's stomach for human remains and Al's stomach for human remains.

Yates was being treated at a hospital in Philadelphia, where he fled last week, and will face criminal endangerment charges. A source said Yates has developed an infection and would be hospitalized most of the week.

Wooo-cat fight!

"That cat could have killed a lot of people in that building," said Larry Wallach, an animal handler working with the nonprofit Center for Animal Care and Control.

Yeah, a bit of genius that one.

It was still unclear how Yates managed to keep the big cat for so long, when Ming was an open secret among tenants.

DRUGS!

Housing Authority officials said neighbors had complained about the smell of urine wafting from Yates' apartment, but insisted no one mentioned a tiger. It wasn't immediately clear if the complaints were investigated.

See comment above.

"We will be looking into the entire situation to determine what was known or not known," said Howard Marder, a Housing Authority spokesman. "Nobody could recall anything like this."

See comment above.

Weighty situation

Tenants are barred from having more than one pet in public housing projects, and the pet must weigh 40 pounds or less.

See comment above.

Ming might have been about that size as a cub about two years ago when Yates brought him to the five-bedroom apartment where he once lived with his mother and several siblings.

And where is this guy's mother and siblings now: in Ming and Al.

Yates treated Ming like a son, building the sandpit and providing balls for him to play with, Domingo said. Al lived in another bedroom, in a fiberglass tank.

Drugs.

Yates and his girlfriend shared another room, and her 4-year-old son had his own bedroom.

There was a KID in the apartment? Drugs.

Domingo said the living room was well-kept and the furniture showed no signs of damage, even though Ming had the run of the place.

Drugs.

Yates, a devoted animal lover, scrubbed Ming's room with bleach and Pine Sol and ran to the market every day for chicken, she said. "That was his baby, as far as he was concerned," Domingo said.

See comment above.

Monday, October 06, 2003 @ 02:53 PM