Kelly Halls - National Geographic Kids Chapters - Tiger in Trouble! - and More True Stories of Amazing Animal Rescues

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eISBN: 978-1-4263-1080-5

v3.1

Version: 2017-07-07

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

NITRO: Tiger in Trouble

Chapter 1: Junkyard Jungle

Chapter 2: To the Rescue

Chapter 3: Nitro’s New Life

ETHEREAL: An Albino Bat Baby

Chapter 1: Lost and Found

Chapter 2: Food and Friendship

Chapter 3: Life in a New Home

SUZIE, BOB, & CALEB: The Three Monkeyteers

Chapter 1: Escape from Tiny Cages

Chapter 2: The Healing Begins

Chapter 3: A New Kind of Family

DON’T MISS!

Dedication

Credits

Acknowledgments

Nitro, a 600-pound tiger, is cared for by Carolina Tiger Rescue. ( illustration credit p01)

Nitro’s Kansas home was a tiny cage in a junkyard. ( illustration credit 1.1)

Ten-year-old Nitro paced in his cage. It was the evening of February 21, 2009. The sun was setting quickly. Nitro’s owner, Jeffrey Harsh, was late with the tiger’s dinner.

Hungry big cats get restless, but Nitro couldn’t pace far. His chain-link cage was only 20 feet wide and 30 feet long—one-third the size of a school gym. Nitro was eight feet long. He could only take a few steps. Then he had to turn and walk the other way. Back and forth. Back and forth.

He stepped over bones in the dust. They were left over from earlier meals. He brushed against Apache, the other tiger in his cage. His empty belly grumbled. He growled and roared.

Nitro and Apache were not alone. There were three female lions in other cages nearby. All of these big cats were living at the Prairie Cat Animal Refuge near Oakley, Kansas—and they were all hungry.

A man wandered to the main gate. The cats’ eyes locked on him. He opened the gate and slowly came inside.

The man passed piles of junk. He looked into each animal’s cage. Nitro listened, while the other cats studied the stranger.

Then the man walked toward a lioness. He slipped his hand inside the metal bars of her gate.

It was a very bad choice.

To the hungry lion, his arm looked like dinner. Her instinct told her to catch her meal, and she listened. She bit down on the stranger’s arm. He screamed and screamed.

Just then Jeffrey drove up with a truck full of meat. He could tell right away things were not right. The entry gate was unlocked and open. Screams were coming from the big cats’ cages. Jeffrey jumped out of his truck and ran toward the sound.

Jeffrey saw the stranger. He ran past Nitro, toward the lion cage. Jeffrey grabbed the man and tried to pull him free. But he wasn’t as strong as the lion, and she would not let go. He never hit the animals, but he didn’t know what else to do. The man was in serious danger.

Jeffrey picked up a metal pipe and swung at the lioness. At last, she opened her jaws, and the frightened man fell back. Jeffrey rushed the stranger to the hospital. As he drove, he called the police on his cell phone.

Nitro would have to wait a little longer for his dinner. His owner was under arrest. He had not protected the stranger from the dangerous big cats.

Until that night, Jeffrey Harsh had broken no laws. Almost half of the states in the U.S. have passed laws to make it illegal to own wild animals like Nitro. Thirteen other states have some rules that say who can keep them and who cannot. The rest of the states have almost no laws at all. There, almost anyone can buy a wild animal.