Wildlife officers shot and killed a 270-kg tiger called Bobo after it escaped from the Florida home of a B-movie actor who played Tarzan.
   
Officers hunted the fugitive cat for more than 24 hours in thick scrub around Loxahatchee, 80 km north of Miami. They spotted it on Tuesday afternoon and hoped to use a tranquilizer dart to recapture it, but the animal lunged at them and was fatally shot, officials said.
   
"The tiger attacked one of our officers. Our officers unfortunately had no choice but to use lethal fire and shot the tiger," a wildlife official told reporters at the scene. "We're very, very sad to report the tiger is deceased."
   
The 6-year-old male tiger, which actor Steve Sipek raised since it was a cub, was declawed but not defanged. It was not necessarily considered a threat to local residents, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Willie Puz said before the animal was killed.
   
"From what I'm told, it's the first time it's been away from home so it's checking to see if it's greener on the other side of the fence, I don't know," Puz said.
   
Sipek, who played Tarzan in two movies in 1969 and 1972 under the screen name Steve Hawkes, looks after mistreated big cats and has another tiger, two lions, a black leopard and a cougar. Local newspapers said the cats roamed freely around his home.
   
Sipek had long had a permit to keep exotic wildlife as pets, said Puz.
   
Local residents were escorted to and from their houses, if they requested it, during the hunt for the elusive cat.
   
Some decided to help wildlife officers hunt for Bobo.
   
Linda Meredith packed a live Yorkshire pig in the trunk of her Cadillac and offered its services in drawing the tiger back home, the Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported.
   
"He has all these humans screaming at him, but he doesn't want that. He wants dinner and that's a pig squealing," she said.
   
The wildlife officers thanked Meredith but sent her and her pig packing.