FRENCH customs agents have discovered a lion cub in a car garage in the southern city of Marseille, they said Friday – days after another was found in the Paris suburbs.

The tiny cub, weighing just a few kilos, was found Oct. 24 inside a pet’s travel cage in a garage to the city’s north. She is believed to be one to two months old, said Bruno Hamon, deputy chief of Marseille’s customs office.

A garage employee, who was temporarily detained by customs agents, said only that he had taken the cub from a Marseille building after its former owners said they were overwhelmed by the situation.

The animal was handed to the SPA animal protection charity, which passed her on to a specialist NGO that works to shelter wild animals, customs officials said in a statement.

The discovery came just a day after French police seized a six-week-old lion cub from an apartment in the Paris suburb of Valenton on Tuesday. Its owner, a 30-year-old man known to police, was arrested. The female cub was discovered in a child’s bed and was in good health.

A source close to the investigation said the cub was likely stolen and that the suspect appeared to have intended to resell her.

There have been a string of such cases around France in recent years, including a half-starved cub rescued from an apartment in Noisy-le-Sec, east of Paris, last year. A small abandoned cub was also found in a cage in a field outside the Dutch city of Utrecht earlier this month. (SD-Agencies)