Melissa Del Bosque in The Texas Observer:
That’s when he heard the yowling.
It was a high-pitched wail, like infants crying, coming from inside the Cherokee. Garcia peered inside the blue crates. There were no bundles of cocaine, no kilos of marijuana. Instead, he saw six tiny tiger cubs peering back at him. It turned out they were endangered Bengal tiger cubs (four white and two orange) bound for a private animal dealer in Mexico.
Garcia could do little. The tiger smugglers hadn’t committed a state crime. You might think it’s illegal to buy or sell an endangered tiger cub in Texas, but it isn’t. For $500, you can buy an orange Bengal tiger and tie it up in your yard, no questions asked (a white tiger will cost you $5,000). It’s all perfectly legal in Texas.
More here.