The man who leaped last year into a tiger’s den at the Bronx Zoo is on the mend — and hoping not to be mauled in court this week on trespassing charges.
David Villalobos’ mom, meanwhile, has reportedly suggested the cat may have saved his life by exposing what she called a bad reaction to the drug Adderall.
“I’m OK,” Villalobos, 25, said outside his Putnam County home, where he walked with a limp — a souvenir from Bachuta, the 400-pound, 11-year-old Siberian tiger whose space he invaded last September.
He refused to discuss his case and headed off with his mother to an appointment with an aquatic physical therapist.
Villalobos jumped 17 feet from a monorail and clambered over a 16-foot-tall fence so, he told cops, he could be “one with the tiger.”
Villalobos told cops he was able to pet the big cat, and that he suffered most of his injuries, including a broken right shoulder, right rib, right ankle and pelvis and a collapsed lung — from his jump.
He pleaded not guilty to criminal trespassing at his arraignment in January and is due back in court Tuesday.
His family has reportedly blamed his behavior on the prescription drug Adderall, given to him for attention deficit disorder, which they said he never had.
“He was always interested in animals, and we brought him up as a Christian, but Adderall changed his way of thinking,” his mom, Fernanda, told the Web site Lawyers and Settlements in November.
Bachuta, she said, likely saved her son’s life — by exposing his reaction to the medication and because jumping in a tiger’s den is not a guaranteed death sentence like plunging from a bridge or skyscraper.
She told The Post Villalobos needs more time to heal.
“I’m almost getting my son back,” she said.