Tiger Recaptured After Film Crew Loses It In Abandoned Detroit Factory

The incident gives a new meaning to the phrase "Detroit Tigers."

A British photography crew on Monday accidentally lost track of a tiger it had brought on a photoshoot at the historic Packard Plant in Detroit.

A British photography crew lost track of a tiger at Detroit's abandoned Packard Plant, seen here in a 2011 file photo.
A British photography crew lost track of a tiger at Detroit's abandoned Packard Plant, seen here in a 2011 file photo.
ERIC THAYER / Reuters

Police confirmed to local TV station Fox 2 Detroit that a tiger went missing during the shoot Monday morning and was recaptured shortly afterward.

Andy Didorosi, a Detroit entrepreneur whose friend, a member of the photography crew, asked him to help recapture the tiger, documented the process in a series of social media posts.

"I'm going to help a friend scare a tiger out of hiding in a staircase. Mondays are always odd," Didorosi remarked on Facebook, adding later, "Update: water no longer scary. Tigers way scarier."

"[The tiger] was growling the whole time, but I think he just wanted people to leave him alone,” Didorosi told The Detroit News. “This whole thing really shook up the usual Monday blahs."

Didorosi posted a photo of the tiger crouching in the stairwell, apparently unfazed by various attempts to scare it off.

He shared a video of the surreal incident as well:

A trainer who was on hand for the photoshoot eventually coaxed the tiger back into its trailer, The Detroit Free Press reported.

The photography crew, headed by David Yarrow, a well-known wildlife photographer, had also brought along two wolves and a bobcat. While the humans had permission to be in the building for the shoot, the animals, whose presence they neglected to mention, most certainly did not, Kari Smith, project manager for the Packard Plant Project, told the MLive Media Group.

"This is not something that we would allow to happen here," she said. "This is not something that we condone in any way."

Yarrow did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post, but said in a statement posted on Facebook that he believed he'd secured the necessary permissions to bring the animals to the shoot:

Didorosi said he thinks outsiders believe Detroit's financial troubles give them carte blanche to act however they please.

"People think it's OK to bring super dangerous animals into the city without alerting the authorities because they think people don't care, because they think it's a cesspool and that they can do whatever [they] want," Didorosi told the Detroit Free Press, condemning the photographer's actions. "That is not cool."

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