Seth Slabaugh

Muncie Star Press

MUNCIE — Air Force veteran and retired factory worker William Hutcherson looked out onto his manicured lawn Tuesday morning and saw one of his menagerie of big cat statues missing.

"Oh no, not again," he thought to himself. "They took another one. What's wrong with these people? Why can't they just leave things alone?"

It's the fifth time in a decade that one of his statues of lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, cheetahs and jaguars has been stolen.

This time it was a tiger estimated to weigh 60 pounds and valued at $1,200. Hutcherson said it would have required two people to take it. Dragging the tiger through the yard, the thieves knocked small branches off of two trees, below one of which Hutcherson found the tiger's tail, which appeared to be made of resin and fiberglass.

"It's not going to do them no good — a tiger without a tail," Hutcherson said.

It's not the first time thieves have left part of a statue behind. One time "they left four paws of a panther that were cemented down," Hutcherson said.

His well-maintained brick ranch house sits across busy, four-lane Tillotson Avenue from a Thai Smile (2) Restaurant south of Ball State University's Scheumann Stadium.

Police in the past have told Hutcherson his missing animals probably wound up in the residences of college students.

From time to time, mothers will stop at his house to ask if they can take photographs of their children in front of the cats.

"I don't mind, just as long as it makes you happy," Hutcherson tells them.

One time, a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary stopped to take a photo.

When motorists stop on Tillotson to gawk, Hutcherson sometimes has to remind them, "Hey, you're slowing up traffic."

It was during a 17-year career in the Air Force that took him around the world, including Vietnam, that Hutcherson, whose nickname is Hutch, became interested in big cats.

Specifically, he became attracted to them while he was stationed in Okinawa, where images of big cats adorned the walls of a dojo, a Japanese training place where he learned martial arts.

Hutcherson was dismissed from the Navy before his goal of 20 years because of a disability — seizures, one of the triggers of which can be stress.

After becoming highly upset Tuesday morning over the theft of the tiger, "I sat down and rested a while to calm down," he said.

Hutcherson has made memorial plaques that he places in front of each of the statues. They include names of departed and living relatives. He has installed up-lights around each cat to highlight them at night.

After the Air Force, Hutcherson, now 67, was a fork lift operator and repair man at the BorgWarner factory in Muncie.

Though no one has ever been arrested in connection with any of the thefts, Hutcherson says of the latest larceny, "The man upstairs knows who took it. They can't get away with that. They will be suffering in the end, not me."

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.