BHAGAVAN ANTLE, the liger trainer, keeps pretty busy—his many gigs include working parties and performing at a venerable Miami theme park called Parrot Jungle Island, where he displays a liger and a gigantic "crocosaurus," a saltwater/Siamese crocodile. This entails a lot of animal shuttling, and Antle invited me to join him on a road trip from Myrtle Beach to Miami, where he would take a liger to a fundraiser at an exotic cat sanctuary and, later, a Super Bowl bash.

We meet at the Myrtle Beach facility, where Antle and his team lead Hercules the liger and two tigers into a trailer with small windows. Antle and I ride in an RV; joining us are three assistants and a diapered, nine-month-old orangutan named Apsara, who's a hybrid, too. (She's a blend of Bornean and Sumatran orangutans, which are different species.) The infant, which has a comical mess of wild orange hair, rides in a baby sling worn by an assistant. Except for the occasional meep meep, you wouldn't know we're rolling with an orang.

During the two-day trip to Miami, a truck-and-trailer hauling the big cats is always right behind us. We refuel at crowded truck stops, pull into strip malls to buy groceries, and even park one night behind a Holiday Inn. No one notices any of the exotic animals until we're stopped at the agricultural checkpoint at the Florida state line. The officer, a good ol' boy with slick hair and big sideburns, checks the paperwork and stumbles on the word liger. "What's that?" he asks.

"A mix of lion and tiger," Antle says.

"Those exist?"

Antle nods and takes out his business card, which shows him sitting with three tigers and Jay Leno. "Jay Leno!" says the officer. "That beats all!"

He waves us on without bothering to peek inside the trailer at one of the rarest creatures in the world. I guess Jay Leno is pretty much his favorite animal.