7---- the Sundcay dcdly There is not a nmore mnean, stupid, dastardly, piti ful, selfish, spiteful, enrious, ungrateful animal than the Public. ----William Hazlitt * NUMBER I MARCH 2, 1969 NIGHT EDITOR: DANIEL ZWERDLING PAGE FOUR Livirng the lif By HOWARD KOHN off :e of the land A Ferndale, Mich. SEVERAL YEARS ago in the big Eastern cities thousands of people began buying thousands-of baby alligators under the com- pulsion to tame a living nucleus of nature's wildness in the privacy of their living rooms. But their sense of adventure soon turned into irritability. Baby alligators grow up to be more than conversation pieces. Many were flushed down the toilet. Most drowned but a few survived the gagging pres- sure of the water pumps and lived. Do you know how mean an alligator can be after living on skinny rats and sour gar- bage in the darkness of a sewer? A repairman who climbed down into the dank dungeons one day found out. He was eaten alive. DESPITE ALL THE risks, the wild animal business is still big business. Wildlife traffic into the United States alone last year totalled 28 million animals-75,000 of them mammals. More than $1.5 million worth were boated in by the International Animal Exchange, the world's biggest importer of wild animals. The organization's headquarters are here in Fern- dale. Owned by the four Hunt brothers-Don, Tom, Brian and Mickey-International Ani- mal Exchange sells animals to virtually every country in the world except Russia and China. Don (Bwana Don) Hunt, 37, the oldest, heads up the African end of the business from the lavish Mount Kenya Safari Club in Nia- robi, Kenya. Don got his nickname and his stake in the mining of animals by starring on a Detroit television show "Bwana Don in Jungle-La." Importing wild animals is immensely profitable because of the mortality rate in- volved in capturing and shipping them. The more you can keep alive, the more money you make. AFTER PAINFUL years of running deli- cately-structured giraffes to death or letting leopards choke on long lassos, Hunt has now reduced his mortality rate to below that of any competitor. Of course, there is still the animal ele- ment. Adult great apes must 6e driven off or killed before their babies can be netted (adults are too irascible for domestication). This means that five or six may die for every one that reaches port. And for birds, which Hunt buys from native trappers, the ratio can go as high as 50 to 1. For bigger and meaner animals, like ele- phants or rhinos, Hunt uses dart guns. "We try to minimize the use of tranquilizers. though," explains Mickey, 26, the youngest. "We don't yet know enough about the dosage and an overdose can easily kill them. "Animals that are hit, also tend to get excited and resist more, if the dosage isn't enough." It is this unbridled and little understood animal psyche, which Hunt is exploring and exploiting, that sometimes works to defeat him. He once spent five months studying the habits of the striped bongo antelope, a rare and skittish animal which sells for $20.000. Finally he managed to catch the antelope without injuring it. But before he could so- cialize it to the norms of captivity, the bongo died of cardiac arrest brought on by sheer terror. "THE IMMEDIATE instinct of a captured animal is to kill itself," says Don Brennan, who helps Tom, 31, and Brian, 29, coordinate the import business in Ferndale. "And if you just crate them up and ship them that's exactly what they'll do, by any means possible. I've seen zebras just let loose at a zoo run up against a wall and break their necks. The taxidermined skin of the bongo ante- lope, including the velvet covering from over the pronged horns, hangs on the wall in Bren- nan's office. Tom and Brian are in Asia and Africa discovering new ways of expanding the business. The phone rings. Long distance from To- kyo. "You want two moose calves right now? Moose calves are born in July and they'd be pretty big to handle by now. The moose is a pretty dangerous animal. Okay, we'll see what we can do." ALL OF THE HUNT ANIMALS are caught to order. Ferndale links -them to animals .all over the world. But most come from Africa. Once captured they are kept in a local cor- ral or transferred to a collection center at Niarobi. Even in Hunt's compounds monkeys from different tribes or bison from different herds do contact fatal diseases when enclosed in the same pens. This is a period of adjustment, a month of learning to eat according to the dictates of zoo dieticians. Cloven-hoofed animals have to spend another two months in quarantine at Mombassa, Kenya's main port. From there they go to the head-to-hoof parasitic baths of Clifton, N.J., If they are coming to the United States and if they have survived sometimes careless handlers w h o drop them or forget to feed them. Some of the Hunt animals end up in the 200-odd zoos in the U.S. where they become bored . and moody because they often have nothing to do except play with their o w n bodies. A monkey inventing new kinds of locomo- tion, like dropping from the ceiling on his head, or masturbating into his straw bed, is a pathetic neurotic. "There is something biologically immoral about keeping animals in enclosures where their behavior patterns, which took millions of years to evolve, can find no expression," criticized Dr. Desmond Morris, curator at the London Zoo, in a recent article. "ANIMALS DO NOT live by nutrition alone," he wrote. Yet Dr. Morris believes that zooswmit h real animals, even though they suffer from in- creased rates of heart disease, cancer and ul- cers and are psychologically deformed, are better than zoos with artificial replicas. And so do the Hunts. They also believe in saving those animals threatened by extinction. "It's our first in- terest after making money, which is, of course, the name of the game," says Mickey. In 1963 Don organized "Operation Chee- tah" in Somalia where poachers had almost eliminated the cheetah. He obtained permits to catch 100 cheetahs, which he did by run- ning them down in a souped-up jeep, grabbing them by the tail and wrestling t h e m into boxes. Cheetahs do not usually breed in capativity. But months were spent tutoring the cats in the disciplines of zoo life, trying to arouse their sexual instincts while curbing t h e i r frenzy to escape. THEN THEY WERE stnt to zoos. Some other Hunt animals have g o n e to game parks like the Lion Safari of West Palm Beach. "The people are in cages (cars) when they drive through to look at the animals" explains Mickey. "One very surprising fact is that within 20 years America will be producing more lions than Africa," he adds. Hunt animals do not go to pet shops, even though a majority of the animals imported into the United States do go to stores for sale. The going price on a baby jaguar, for in- stance, is $2,000. Mickey operates two "Bwana Don" pet shops in Detroit. But the only wild animals inside are $59.95 mynah birds - guaranteed to talk and bought from a secret supplier in India - and a caracal. The caracal, a lynx-like cat with d a r k pointed ears and a lisping snarl, paces nerv- ously in a wire cage above a "Do not tease" sign. Brought from Africa, the caracal alter- nates with a cheetah or baby lion as drawing cards for the domestic puppies. "WE USED to sell cheetahs and baby lions," says Mickey. "But people would get tired of them and mistreat them or sell them for their skins. "Now if someone wants to buy a wild ani- mal he has to prove to me he's a lover of wild animals and will take care of them." Buses filled with grade-school children visit the "Bwana Don" shops daily. "They can be pretty noisy," complains Mickey. "But. they seem to have so much fun that I hate to can- cel the visits." Indeed Mickey's enthusiasm f o r children has extended to a newly-conceived miniature zoo to open June 1 on Bob-Lo Island in the Detroit River. THE MINIATURE ZOO, which will offer giraffes, zebras, cheetahs, tigers and lions in typical zoo fortifications will also feature a one acre Garden of Eden barricaded by a four- foot fence. Inside on green asphalt kids will be able to frolic with cows, sheep and domesticated lions and tigers in a Biblical fantasyland. "I think if children can understand and ap- preciate animals first they'll be able to under- stand people a lot better," says Mickey. QUACK! Let's talk duck By FRED LaBOUR CHRIS WANTED to name him Ed. But I came up with Everybody Duck which is usually the kind of thing I come up with in my family and we settled on that. We bought Everybody at a feedstore just before last Easter when he was two days old. Just between you and me, I've always been a chickie man myself but Chris was determined that she would have a duck so that's what we got. er in He lived in the kitchen for a month or so. Then when the weath- warmed up and his real feathers developed, we moved him outside a nice dry box under a tree. WE FED EVERYBODY corn twice a day and brought a plastic swimming pool to fill up the rest of his life. And he seemed a genial, if eccentric, addition to our family. I don't think he ever fully perceived he wasn't human because he demanded that we treat him with respect, dignity, and reserva- tion due the only d u c k in the neighborhood. If we abused him or spoke to him in mocking quacks, he sulked under the apple trees and pretended he could lay an egg. My, mother always got up very early last summer because she had somehow taken my father's sud- den death personally and she said the mornings were always the hardest. I would hear her from in- side of my sleep as s h e walked outside to talk with the duck. It was eerie and wonderful how they seemed to get along. "Good morning, Everybody, how's my duck?" And the damned duck would tear across the yard quack-} ing a mile a minute answering her. He e v e n quacked out sentences occasionally and it was like he was my mother's best friend. I could hear her walk around the yard with the duck right be- hind talking pleasantly together about the summer, the weather, and what my mother hadn't planned for the day. IT SEEMED to me that my mothermade more sense when she talked things over with Everybody than when the bright young min- ister visited our house and tried to explain away her tears. When the fall came, I took Everybody up to Uncle Bob's farm and my mother went back to 'college to learn to teach. She still cries though when I go home but sometime soon maybe I'll find a good book about reincarnation. The evol Utio on of the, specious rtight to kil Where do sheep go By BILL LAVELY when they die? Detroit THE SHEEP are silent at four in the morning as they stand in the freezing truck awaiting the opening of the slaughter house. The dark air crackles. Tinder-filled oil drums are ignited and men stand in their warmth. Lights flash on. Men don white, bloody- stained jackets and enter mammoth refrigerators for their day's work, Day breaks at Eastern Market. UP A RAMP go the, sheep, then down another for the stick in the leg, the bleed, and the slice through the neck. Then they are hoisted on hooks - the hook going between the leg muscle and ankle bone of the two rear legs, and they are slid along rails through cold rooms heaped with damp sawdust. The sheeppasses from man to man - each man on the disas- sembly line making another expert cut along the rear and belly until the last man grabs the heavy fleece and peels it off the sheep's back like masking tape off a plaster wall. All is divided. The head goes one way, the innards another. The fleece disappears up a conveyor belt, and the glistening pink body' of the sheep continues down the rail to join a flock of others. A G-man stamps a purple seal on a haunch. T h e n big men, sweating even in the cold, carry the meat to a truck and swing it on- By JIM BECK UNFORTUNATELY, one of America's most cherished rites de passage is the one for the farm boy around his 11th or 12th birthday. Al- most with ritual he is' taken out by his father into the forests to learn to kill. Earlier he has spent months learning how to aim, how to steady the rifle on the shoulder, how to sight a moving buck or a fleeting dove. But no one can teach him how to decide to pull the trigger-sometimes, not even himself. I could never kill anything. Stepped over ants or flicked mosquitos off my arm instead of swat- ting them. Ridiculous? Perhaps, but oftentimes very comforting to think about. AS A BELATED initiate into the rural life, I accompanied a friend into the blackness of a grey forest in Arkansas in November, equipped with guns and bullets. We were out to get a buck. He was a beautifully colored, muscular animal. A ten-point buck about ready to loose his crown only a hundred yards away, staring at us with defiance, propped upon a tiny butte undoubtedly guarding a hidden fawn or doe. He stared at us and my friend looked at me with an embarrassed, "Well, it's your turn now." Didn't even bring the sight to my eye. I just let the gun hang at my side and looked at his white chest and tennisball-size black eyes, staring at me. Both of us just looked at him until he went away. I was never quite as afraid of my rifle again-I would never use it. Can't quite understand why men like to kill life and then display their prowess by hanging part of the corpse in their living rooms. We treat these living compatriots with an inanimate, al- most greedy indifference, and culture a child- like pride by so robustly displaving our dominance in the primitive, unreasoning animal mind man is simply something to be feared-something like a storm, irrational, untimely, unthinking and deadly. IT IS FUN to hear the warriors prostelytizing that hunting is necessary, to keep the ecology in line. That is only because we have already upset the natural ecology. If there are too many deer or dove-it is because we have bred them to be killed just so they can boost our virility and nurture our sadism. Were we to end all killing, eventually natural ecology would return and the survivors would be the healthiest, the most beautiful. But man 4 9 manamosmaamamon ' "RX Mt.