Late that year, 1961, I was drinking with some White Star Troops(Special Forces) in Vientiane and offered a bounty if they could get me a tiger cub. A short time later they brought me a cub and he lived with me in my old French apartment in downtown Vientiane. Whenever I went out in public, I kept Tuffy on a long chain. Tuffy loved to ride around on the windshield of my jeep and was very good-natured as a cub. When the Americans were kicked out of Laos, Tuffy transferred to the U.S. Embassy where some of the staff guards cared for him. I moved to Thailand and was still flying mostly fixed wing when I happened to visit Soc Trang not long after the 93rd TC moved there. Captain Leon Curry of the 93rd was a friend of mine and I felt sorry for Them-- I mean they called themselves the SOC TRANG TIGERS but didn't even have a tiger! I knew Tuffy was getting too big to stay in the Embassy and when the 93rd agreed to take him as their mascot, I arranged for Air America to fly Tuffy to Soc Trang. I still remember how everyone gathered around the C-47 and slowly opened the door. Tuffy came bounding out and everyone scattered to the winds - they didn't know he was on a chain!! The 93rd built a large cage for Tufffy and everything was fine for a few weeks. In the wild, tigers are nocturnal hunters and as Tuffy matured he began to act more and more like a tiger and less like an oversized kitten. If you ever get to a 145th CAB(V)A Reunion you can see several photos of Tuffy on their traveling boards. Notice that Tufffy was about the size of the tire on a CH-21C. We called him C/Msgt because he had lots of stripes. Not long after this , a couple of pilots had too much to drink one night and decided to go play with Tuffy. They may have been a little tired and drunk, but the tiger wasn't!!! I heard they were so scratched up that they couldn't fly the next day. Anyway, Tuffy had to go. Somehow, the Toledo Zoo got involved and agreed to take the tiger. I returned to the States about the same time that Tuffy arrived and in November, I went to see him. The Zoo people weren't going to let me near him; but were surprised that Tuffy actually reconized me, by rubbing up against his cage and even let me pet him. It really broke my heart to have to let him go. To put an end to this story, Tuffy was euthanized due to kidney failure on June 13, 1980. His first mate produced a large number of cubs and his second produced 12 but not all lived. Later the cubs were provided to various zoos but the Toledo Zoo no longer keeps tigers.