Beginning last Tuesday, December 15, 2009, several folks around Oyster Creek, Texas, (population 1200) began reporting they were seeing specifically a mystery cat with black and orange striping patterns, crossing near the Buc-ee’s Truck Stop at FM 523 and Highway 332. One sighting on Friday, December 18, 2009, was by a fisherman who said he saw a tiger on the shore of the stream actually named Oyster Creek.

The town in Brazoria County is about fifty miles south of Houston, just north of Freeport, and very close to the Gulf of Mexico, in Texas.

Oyster Creek Police Sgt. Rick Hempel told the Associated Press on December 18, 2009, that police have received “several recent but unconfirmed reports of a tiger sighted.” He noted that most eyewitnesses “described the animal simply as a large cat.”

Media reports have been coming in from the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, KHOU, MyFox Houston, and other Texas sources.