For a year and a half, the century-old tiger’s head silently snarled on a table at an exclusive club. Then it vanished.

Now Mark Letzer, the head’s owner, is hoping whoever took the taxidermy from the Maryland Club in December will bring it back.

“No questions asked,” said Letzer. “Leave it on the doorstep. I don’t care.”

Letzer said he purchased the tiger’s head about 20 years ago and believes it had belonged to a circus animal that died in the late 1800s in Paris. It has striped fur, sharp fangs and a curled plaster tongue.

“It was a prize piece in my possession,” said Letzer, the former president and CEO of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, adding that he owns and lends out several other pieces of historic taxidermy.

“It’s important to me that these things are not distant, but you can feel them and touch them,” he said.

He loaned the tiger’s head to the private club in July 2024, and it sat on a table in a parlor decorated with preserved wild animals until Dec. 12.

That’s when Letzer believes someone snatched the head during a holiday party, although its absence was not discovered until Dec. 15. The club was closed during the intervening days, he said.

The general manager of the Maryland Club did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Letzer was adamant that he does not blame the club, of which he is a member, for the theft of the tiger.

“It’s a wonderful institution, and I don’t hold them at all responsible,” Letzer said.

A police report corroborates Letzer’s account and notes that the head had been on display in a room “set aside for vendors and musicians and other staff for catering.”

About 15 to 30 people had been authorized to be in the room, but “untold numbers of guests” could have also wandered in, the report states.

Letzer is astonished that someone managed to sneak off with the head, which is attached to a large wooden base.

“That someone would be so cavalier to just walk out with it — it’s preposterous to me," he said. “How did they ever get it out?”

He’s unsure of the value of the head — there isn’t a huge market for antique taxidermy tiger’s heads — but the police report puts it at $5,000.

Letzer hopes that whoever took the tiger’s head will return it to the club.

“I love my object. I’ve had it for many, many years and I want it back,” he said. “It makes me sad that someone just went home with it.”