The Land of Nye or The Land of Nod?

Seven Tigers Rescued in a Tale Stranger Than Fiction

Not to speculate on things that bump around in the bureaucratic night, but if ever there was a place fit for strange tidin’s and stranger people, it’s Nye County.

Art Bell, the late-night radio bard of all things curious and cosmic, used to call it “The Land of Nye”—a wink and a nudge to the biblical “Land of Nod,” where God exiled Cain. It’s reckoned Bell knew what was happening out among the sagebrush and secrets, and that’s the reason he bunkered up tighter than a tick on a hound.

Recently, the desert spit out another oddity–a posse of law and tiger wranglers descended on the sunbaked sprawl of Pahrump to relieve a feller by the name of Karl Mitchell of seven full-grown tigers he was keepin’ like a set of yard cats. That’s right—seven tigers, right out there where God intended tumbleweeds, not Bengal stripes.

Now Mr. Mitchell, whose name gets spoken in exotic animal circles like a warning on a medicine bottle, claims the tigers were gifts from none other than Joe Exotic. If you’ve seen Tiger King on the electric television, then you know Mr. Exotic is to animal husbandry–what a coyote is to calculus.

But Mr. Mitchell declared with a straight-enough face, “I love the animals and believe I have the right to keep them at my home.”

Bless its sunbaked soul, Nevada is one of only three states where you can keep tigers and whatnot without a full-blown safari license. But there are rules–kinda like fence posts—not hard to knock down if you know where to lean.

In stomped the good folks from Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, from Arkansas, led by President Tanya Smith.

“We didn’t even know how many we were coming for,” Smith said, which is just the sort of thing you don’t want to hear on a tiger run. “Turns out it was seven. We got ‘em loaded up, sedated ’em with a little cocktail of melatonin, ketamine, and midazolam—sort of a tiger nightcap—and hit the road.”

The road, by the by, stretches 1,400 miles back to Arkansas, a trip made longer by storms, mountain passes, and the occasional romantic entanglement–one of the lady tigers was in heat. So they had to separate the boys and girls, like in junior high.

Dr. Kellyn Sweeley, the attending veterinarian, clarified the ketamine part of the protocol, though it might leave a tiger a bit green around the gills.

“We always use a dissociative when handling dangerous carnivores,” she said.

It’s not unlike sedating a politician—best done thoroughly.

The tigers were in small cages, filthy enclosures, with muscles wasting from disuse—”some of the worst I’ve seen,” according to Smith. It was, in her words, “the same stuff we see at these places,” which is a more damning indictment than a preacher’s glare.

A SWAT escort helped conduct the rescue because Mr. Mitchell wouldn’t go gentle. He raised a fuss, fought back, and found himself reintroduced to the Nye County jailhouse.

As for payment? There ain’t any. Not yet. Turpentine Creek’s footin’ the bill for now and hopin’ the good people of Nye County might loosen their purse strings or buy a round of kibble.

So here it is—seven tigers en route to green pastures–well, greener than a desert lot in Pahrump–a colorful cast of characters, and enough intrigue to make a man wonder if the Land of Nye is more than it appears. Maybe Art Bell did know something we didn’t. Maybe those late-night tales of government secrets, alien ranchers, and spectral housecats weren’t as outlandish as we thought.

After all, if a man can keep seven tigers in the desert and call it love, anything’s possible.