Trooper Pulls Over Trailer Missing 2 Tires, Finds Lemur, Exotic Animals Inside

Footage released by the force shows one trooper walking over to the pickup truck, which was dragging a horse trailer with 2 missing tires, when a leaping lemur took him by surprise. As it turns out, the lemur wasn’t the only exotic animal inside: ClickOrlando says police also retrieved a tortoise, a wallaby, a goat, a parrot and a sheep.

Prior to the truck pulling over, the footage shows sparks flying from the trailer: it was missing 2 right tires and was going on the exposed rims. At least 3 drivers called 911 to say they’d been hit by the pickup truck and that the driver hadn’t stopped, and all of them positively ID-ed Shane Taylor and his pickup after the arrest.

“A traffic stop was conducted and the trooper immediately noticed that the driver, 27-year-old Shane Taylor, was slurring his speech, had bloodshot eyes and appeared to be disoriented,” the publication reports.

Taylor was arrested and taken to the hospital, while animal services came to pick up the animals he was traveling with. The sheep had bleeding lacerations and not one of the animals was properly secured – so Taylor is also facing an animal cruelty charge.

In the video released by the police, he’s shown telling the troopers that they don’t know how to handle the lemur and even reproaches them for not knowing what a wallaby looks like. His intoxicated state could account for the extra protectiveness he felt for the animals at the last moment: the report notes that he was so drunk he urinated on himself in the back of the patrol car, on the way to the hospital.

He could have done without the animal cruelty charge: according to the same publication, he’d already been hit with “DUI, leaving the scene of a crash, driving without a license and reckless driving.”