Police aren’t searching for a tiger in NC town, but that hasn’t stopped the rumors
Iredell County emergency officials said they aren’t searching for a tiger after receiving a 911 call Wednesday morning that one may have been on the loose in the town of Troutman.
Troutman is about 35 miles north of Charlotte.
No one else called in a similar sighting in the hours after the first call, Chris Steele, assistant supervisor of the county emergency communications center, told The Charlotte Observer.
Emergency officials also checked with the owner of a nearby zoo, who reported that all of his tiger enclosures were secure, Steele said.
None of which kept the rumors at bay.
Zootastic Park of Lake Norman fielded about 100 calls from the public and a handful from media outlets, park owner Scottie Brown told the Observer.
Brown is an Iredell County commissioner who’s up for re-election on Tuesday.
He said he went straight to the source of the tiger call, a woman who also posted on Facebook about the beast her husband told her he saw.
“When your husband calls you on his way to work & says ‘I just saw a tiger walking down Perry!’ you get in the car & go look for it,” Sheryl Scott of Troutman posted. “I did NOT see this huge cat but I did call & report it.
“If you’re near Ostwalt Amity / Zootastic, be on the lookout & lock your pets up,” Scott, a local real estate agent, warned.
She soon updated her post: “My husband said it looks like a tiger bc it has stripes. We do NOT know for sure what kind of big cat it may be. Regardless, stay safe & aware!”
After county officials called him, Brown said, he checked his zebra and tiger enclosures and all of them were secure.
Such animal parks as Zootastic are federally licensed and are among five exemptions under the county’s animal control ordinance that otherwise prohibits people from keeping such exotic animals, according to Kristian Hernandez , director of the Iredell County Animal Services and Control Department.
Hernandez said he doesn’t know how many tigers live in the county but is sure the only ones who do are all at Zootastic Park.
He said he’d learned of the 911 call about an hour before the Observer called him and needed to look into it further.
In a later update, Scott posted that the animal could have been a cougar that was seen in another area of the county last week.
Brown said he visited the ditch where Scott told him her husband saw the tiger about 5:30 a.m.
He said he found no animal tracks in or near the ditch. Except, “I think I saw a Bigfoot track,” Brown quipped.
This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 5:45 AM.