Trio chase and lasso escaped tiger in Mexico street

It was the most surreal of Mexican moments: a man clad in cowboy hat lassoing a tiger on the sidewalk of a suburban Guadalajara street.

In a 23-second video shot from a passing car, the tiger can be seen trotting along a sidewalk, while the man with the lasso – along with another carrying a folding chair and a third man – chased the feline.

“Diós mio!” exclaimed a woman on the video, shot from the safety of a passing car.

“How are they going to catch it,” a second woman in the car asked nervously. “I don’t know,” her friend responded.

The footage shows a car pulling over in front of the tiger, blocking the sidewalk and forcing the animal to turn around. The man with the lasso then twirled it above his head and threw the rope around the tiger’s neck – just off camera – as the animal tried to dart off down the street.

The short video has been viewed thousands of times, and offered Mexicans an absurd respite from the Covid-19 crisis, during which there have been more than 42,000 infections, and a brief return to the strange news cycles Mexico has seemed to perpetually produce.

“Tiger King, Mexico version?” asked one tweet.

Others speculated on who might own a tiger since Mexican circuses are no longer to use animals in their shows. Some drug cartel bosses are believed to keep to keep wild animals as pets.

Details on the tiger and the men pursuing it remain scant. None of the three men has been identified and none has spoken to the press. The tiger escaped on Tuesday from a private residence in the Guadalajara suburb of Tlaquepaque, according to the local government, which had sent out its fire department in response to calls.