Five years ago, Auburn University chemical engineering professor Dr. Bill Josephson went on a tiger hunt. Just for fun, Josephson decided to hunt down as many of the “Tigers on the Prowl” sculptures set up in Auburn as he could.

“I just thought it was cool,” Josephson said of the tigers.

Josephson found 12 of the original 25 tigers and added their photos to his Web site., eng.auburn.edu/users/josepbe.

Little did he know, five years later some of his students would take on the hunt to find the rest.

Auburn student Zach Taylor looked up Josephson’s Web site for more information about him to use as a reference for a job.

“He had an ‘About Me’ section,” Taylor said. “On it he said he liked to go on tiger hunts and had pictures of the ones that he found.”

Taylor and his friend Collyn Loper, another of Josephson’s students, decided that they were going to take on the challenge to find more tigers than Josephson.
“We decided that we wanted to try to one-up him and get more than him,” Taylor said.

According to the Auburn University Libraries online journal, Bits ‘n PCs, “Tigers on the Prowl” was a joint project around 2001 between the Auburn Chamber of Commerce and the Auburn Architecture Department. The idea came from someone that saw the cows placed in Chicago, Ill., around 1998. The Architecture Department was contacted to begin the work. Once the molds were designed, Auburn students and artists were asked to paint the tigers. Many of the tigers were stolen or vandalized and had to come down. Some were taken home with their sponsors, some were sold, but many still stand in Auburn.

Taylor and Loper will graduate from Auburn at the end of the summer and claimed the tiger hunt to be their “last adventure as students.”

They started their tiger hunt at places they knew tigers existed like the fire department and Bodega. When they couldn’t find anymore, the students visited the Auburn Chamber of Commerce. To their surprise, the Chamber had no idea the location of the remaining tigers. But the students had more luck at City Hall.
“The folks at City Hall were extremely helpful and gave us a list of the tigers’ last known locations and asked us if we would please post the pictures on a Web site and let them know of the location so they can share with future Auburn visitors,” Loper said.

The two made their way around Auburn, finding tigers at J&M Bookstore, Dean Road Elementary, the Auburn Public Library, Charter Bank, Arby’s on South College, the Hilton Garden Inn, the AU Bookstore and more. The students found 17 of the 25 tigers.

“It was a lot of fun,” Taylor said. “I didn’t realize how nice everybody in Auburn was. We would go one place and they would think what we were doing was cool and they’d ask for our email addresses and said they’d email us if they found any more.”

Taylor said finding the tigers was pretty easy. He said that every place that they would go would know of one tiger that they had not found.

“One tiger led to the next,” he said.

Taylor and Loper did run into a few complications. They heard that there was a tiger in the Village Mall, but were never allowed to see it.

“The first time we went they told us it was in a vacant store and we couldn’t see it,” Taylor said. “The second time they said they didn’t have one.”

The student’s tiger hunt took about five days, working two or three hours a day before they decided that they found all that were were going to find.

Check out more photos of Taylor and Loper’s tiger hunt at thecornernews.com and soon on Josephson’s Web site.

“We will be posting our finds on Dr. Josephson’s Web site so anyone wishing to hunt for tigers can follow our path,” Loper said. “We both agree that this ‘hunt’ became one of the best weeks we had ever spent at Auburn and will forever remember this experience.”

Check out photos of the tigers Taylor and Loper found here: http://www.thecornernews.com/index.php/cornered3/category/5908/119/

Below is Taylor and Loper’s list of all of the known ‘Tigers on the Prowl’1- Dean Road Elementary
2- Auburn High (previously on roof top)
3- Charter Bank
4- Rehab Works
5- Monarch Estates
6- Auburn Public Library
7- Auburn Fire Department
8- Auburn Student Union
9- AU Bookstore
10- Auburn Junior High School
11- Auburn Chamber of Commerce
12- South College J&M
13- Bodega
14- Hilton Garden Inn
15- The Corner News
16- Auburn High Gym
17- South College Arby’s
18- Village Mall
19- Mr. Ware’s Yard (of Ware Jewelers)
20- Houseboat in Louisiana
21- Unknown location in the new Student Union
22- Houston Clinic (added by Corner reader)
Did they miss any? Let us know in the comment section.