This call will be recorded in subject to monitoring at any time. Who's this? Joe. I'm going to be a little bit more I'm going to be a little bit more I excited about to ever have. Ladies and gentlemen, calling straight from prison, the one the only tiger king himself, Joe exotic. You may begin speaking now. Joe, the man himself. How are you doing, man? I'm doing better than you, I think. Yeah, I bet you are. Sir, I have a lot to talk to you about. Now you have have... Well, we get 15 minutes and the phone will hang up,

and if we need more time, it is a clock I can go back for 15 more. Let's do that. Okay, thank you. If I can get you some cash in any way, to help with anything or the fans, please let me know how we could do that. Okay. So, I got a lot of questions. I want to talk about getting you out, but I want to talk with something positive first.

You probably don't know this about me.

My first job was writing for an aquarium magazine. So I'm very... Yeah, tropical fish hobbyist. I'm very familiar with animal husbandry. And that is obviously something that's a passion of yours. Something that you love. So can you talk to the fans a bit about what drew you to big cats in particular, but you know private zoos? Well, you know, I started as a police. Way back in the day, okay, and then when I had motto action, I moved to West Palm Beach and I started doing my physical therapy and rehab there because I was in braces for my neck to my toes. My neighbor was the manager of Lyon Country's Farron, Hebrew home of the baby Tigers Alliance monkeys of the night's bullfrog. That's what got me interested in dating Sonic animals. They're in 1986. I moved back to Texas and being my brother bought a pet store in Oregon, Texas and we got exotter animals in Saltwater Fish and fish on the fish and we did that until 1997 and he got killed in a car wreck south of Dallas and I moved to a home

I sold everything and moved to a plumber and take care of my mom and dad and me and my mom and dad built this sanctuary and members of my brothers and believe it or not I've never even seen a full girl tell you how I feel. I knew you were going to think this is great you guys. So in 2001, we opened the zoo in 1999 and 2001 Artmore of the Oklahoma Police Department called me and said hey somebody moved out of this neighborless they left two tigers in a mountain line and brought what's going back here. King is come get him. Oh wow. Okay, so I said sure. So I loaded up my bed. We hooked up to horse trail and we get down there. And these animals were like so skinny and so sharp. But that is. Okay, so we tranquilized them. I put them in their horse trail and we get them back to the park. And I'm the only one there because we still aren't picking up tabling volunteers or or or fleet okay so Ryan my other half of the time was in the house dying on hospital okay so I was there by myself all the time well I locked myself in the cage with these two full-grown tires that were sick and I would play the cage, give them their meds and rub on them because I mean they were so sick because they were not on the walker road. So I did this every day, I should have died a thousand times. I did this every day by myself, I locked myself in this cage for these full-. Wow. And then about six months down the road, I get up and I go out by myself in case, go to the cleaning case, crawl in there, or wooden cabin, then I built for them to clean in there. And here's six little baby tigers. Oh wow. My first litter was six tigers. OK, so that was my first experience with baby tigers. So then just out of the blue every game or every share of something Everybody entire United States started calling me to get tires. Oh And it got 2006 it got so so many calls that honestly got Michael.

I really sent my cattle trucks.

So many of them.

Okay.

My biggest rescue is 42 at one time.

Wow.

And so people started calling me the time to change.

I'm back in 2006 before any of this ever happened.

Right.

And how I got the name Joe exoticotic was, in order to pay for the zoo, I traveled to a magic show. OK. And I used skunks and dogs and little animals. And the kids couldn't say my real name, because my real name was Joe Shriverville. So they called me exotic Joe. So Joey's got turned around and here I am. Joe's on the back. You know I was recently at the Dallas zoo in aquarium and I don't think people appreciate how big tigers are. Like you see the pictures but when you see yeah when you see in real life and you see how it moves and the strength, this is no joke. They're the largest land corner of the world, incredibly intelligent. So I mean, can you talk a bit about the dangers besides the obvious ones? Like what does it take for animal husbandry at that level? Well, you know, a full-grown tiger, this call is from the federal prison, because we take them, you know, dead cattle with speed lots and stuff like that, so we fed them. And that time kept my tiger so healthy is because the bones be there. But a full grown tiger has enough neck muscle that they can lift a four or five hundred pound cow. Holy crap, yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay, and rugwood. Right. But when a lot of people don't understand, uh, is a tiger is the only animal on the planet that can take your pulse with this K19. Oh my god. Okay, so every time a tiger grabs something by the neck, they don't let go until they can feel that heart stop because they can feel the pulse with their teeth. So that's okay, I'm almost here, but you know Ryan Eastway, they just got killed here a couple weeks ago in Oklahoma. by his type, you know, they got it by the neck. They get really worn, sick pretty good by the neck. That's what tigers do.

But... Uh, in Oklahoma by IST, you know, they got it by the neck because they get really orange. St. Louis by the neck. Uh, that's what tigers do. But how I got away with what I got away with, because let me tell you, over 23 years, I probably interacted with close to 4,000 tigers. Uh, you know, because I donated them to Sue's all over the world. So they didn't have to buy tires. Right. And I never got hurt. I walked in a cage of 20 and 20 at a time because I never made them do anything they didn't want to do. If I walk in a cage of 20 tires and only one wanted to come up, be loved on them. Then I only loved them one. But you know if they wanted to stay away. They stay away. But people in the industry for circuses and stuff like that, they don't want that bond. They have to be scared of the type that's be scared of in order to make them do tricks. And that's where people get hurt. And that's the crazy part about why I'm even in here. Because the big cat's seat, yeah. You know, it's a tiger team, you know, portrays and tried to, you know, they passed along. It didn't do it in for tires. It didn't do it. It didn't do nothing for tires. Because everybody that was breeding like I was was USDA license. So that law don't apply to them. You know how messed up that law is, and I can speak from my own experience. So I'm into succulents, right? And there are these many species that are very rare in nature, but what happens is you get someone with a greenhouse, he propagates it, and now you have thousands of them everywhere, and you can reintroduce them to the wild. Tigers, it's the habitat that's being encroached

and where the people in the zoo think they're coming from.

They're not coming from thin air.

So if you come and turn the wild,

exactly.

But what I'm saying is if you have private breeders

who are respectable,

that is how you keep a stock of any of these species alive

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