Help for Animals Abused by Man

By a staff writer

SOME of the animals are former pets. Others were abused, orphaned or injured. Still others were confiscated by local, state or federal authorities. Not all are native to the United States; many are exotic animals in need. Some have been declawed, defanged, neutered or crippled by malnutrition or by the cruelty of former owners. All of them have found help at Wildlife Waystation. Its boast is: “Wildlife Waystation has never turned away an animal in need!”

My visit there last August convinced me the boast is true.

After a photographer and I had driven several miles up Little Tujunga canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles, we arrived at this 160-acre animal compound. We were welcomed by a tanned and healthy young woman​—Martine Colette, founder and president of this nonprofit, tax-exempt animal facility. (Visitors are received by appointment only.) With friendliness, competence and articulateness, she conducted our tour of Wildlife Waystation.

“This is Cowboy,” Martine said, as we stopped at the first cage. In it was a beautiful big mountain lion.

“This animal was six months old when he was found in a pet store, malnourished and with bad teeth​—fortunately, they were his baby teeth. He’s now in perfect condition, mentally well disposed.”

“But that name, Cowboy?” I faltered.

She laughed. “When he was small I let him loose with the horses. He loved to chase them. The horses didn’t mind then​—they wouldn’t care for it now.”

Sheena’s Sad Story

No light-heartedness later when we were looking at another mountain lion.

“Here’s a sad story,” Martine began. “The man had an elegant apartment​—Louis XVI reproduction furniture, chandeliers, white silk couches, antiques. He visualized another piece of ‘furniture’​—an elegant animal walking through all this opulence. He bought a mountain lion cub. He did not, however, understand the mountain lion. The cub started to do the things that such babies will do. So he removed her claws. She grew older, but she still did not behave according to his specifications. Her canine teeth were the next to go. That wasn’t enough, so all her teeth were pulled. He still was not satisfied, so she’s here.”

Martine leaned close to the cage and said softly, “Hi, Sheena.” The big cat looked at her forlornly, but with urging Sheena opened her mouth wide. All gums, not a tooth in her head. A pan of a mushlike mixture was near her. “We prepare her food special,” Martine explained.

As we left Sheena, Martine volunteered: “A few people can care for wild animal pets. Most people who have them fail them. Not through deliberate cruelty, but through ignorance, or lack of care, or ego trips, whatever.”

“Many people,” I said, “are drawn to these magnificent big cats, yearn to have them as pets to fondle. I understand the feeling. I share it. But lions are not poodles. They’re designed for jungles, not living rooms. Some, like the man who ruined Sheena, want to feed their ego, use the animal to project a macho image.”

We visited the wolves.

“This pair came from a zoo. That one is from an animal compound whose owner was killed. This one we found chained in someone’s yard up north.” As Martine talked she interrupted herself to call out greetings to individual wolves and getting responses from them.

“Wolves are so misunderstood. People who have them do all the wrong things, transgress against the animal’s social behavior, come between it and its food, or between it and its mate. It reacts, it bites someone.” After a pause she continues: “I feel sorrow for the wolves. They’re very exuberant, they’re runners, they eat up the miles. These 40-foot runs are nothing for them. Hopefully, our next project will be to put them into an acre enclosure.”

Nasty Hates Us

At the next cage I saw a Chinese leopard. “It’s the biggest of the leopards,” Martine said. “We have to do dental work on this one.” She called out, “Hi, Nasty! Hi, Son!” The leopard’s response was to open his mouth wide and blow at her. “His name is Dynasty,” she explained, “but we call him Nasty for short.”

“Does he live up to his nickname?” I asked.

“Absolutely!”

“He’s blowing at us again.”

“Dynasty does not believe in people at all. He was in a zoo, then in a kind of safari park, then to us. Hopefully, after getting his teeth fixed, we can place him in a zoo.” As we left, Nasty gave us a parting blast.

“This is George the Jaguar,” Martine said. “You don’t see jaguars worked in circuses, unless they’re young. Old ones are unpredictable. No,” she corrected herself, “they are predictable. They will eat you.”

“That’s predictable enough for me.” To the jaguar I said: “Whatever else you are, George, you are certainly beautiful, a Gorgeous George!”

“Look at that face! Look at that face!” Martine cooed as we stood gazing at a big Siberian tiger. It was a strikingly beautiful face. “This doctor always wanted a tiger,” she explained. “It was his fantasy from the time he was a little boy. He bought this one as a cub for $3,000. By the time it was four months old, the good doctor spent most of his time on the kitchen floor. In play the baby bowled him over constantly. Fortunately, he was a sane man, not an egotistical individual, and he realized, ‘If at four months he splatters me all over the place, what will he do when he’s grown?’ The good doctor sent him to us.”

“Reesha, Reesha,” she called out softly to the tiger, and the great yellow eyes gazed steadily at her out of that incredibly beautiful face. Martine’s devotion to her charges is unmistakable. She slipped her hand through the fence. With a big pink tongue Reesha washed it for her.

“How old is Reesha?” I asked.

“He’s just a baby​—three years old.”

“And how much does he weigh?”

“Now, about 550 pounds, later, 750.”

Farther along I admired a big maned lion. The photographer started to take his picture. He rose majestically and walked away. “He doesn’t want his picture taken. The king is telling you your audience is over,” Martine said.

Sad Story, Happy Ending

Next we visited a beautiful lioness. “Here’s a sad story with a happy ending,” Martine said. “As a cub she was kept in a tiny cage with a small male. Either through starvation or disease, the male died, and she, to appease her hunger, was cannibalizing him. When the owner saw this he chastised her with a piece of pipe. She charged, and he knocked out all her teeth. When she came here at six months of age she had no fur from the ears down, because nobody had cleaned her cage, and urine and fecal burns had removed her hair. She hated people with a passion. Come near her and she would try to kill you. Now she’s relaxed and healthy, claws and teeth intact​—it was her baby teeth that were knocked out.”

By now we were in the center of the sprawling compound. “How many animals do you have here?” I asked.

“I really don’t know. I don’t want to count. If I did I might decide I couldn’t afford to feed them. You’ve been seeing the big stuff, but we have dozens of raccoons, baby foxes, baby coyotes. And who knows how many birds.”

“You don’t stop at anything, do you?”

“No, we’re not just with the big stuff. It’s very visible and dramatic, but the bulk of our work is with the little stuff.”

The Unpredictable Bears

The next feature, however, was very big stuff​—a huge Kodiak brown bear slumped against the bars of his cage.

“This is Chow. His trainer was feeding him fish one day, and Chow took the fish and the trainer’s leg. Understandably, the trainer lost interest in Chow, so Chow landed with us. In my opinion,” Martine volunteered, “of all the carnivores, bears are the most unpredictable. Their eye expression never changes. The big cats, wolves and others give a warning. Their eye expressions and body language change. With bears, nothing changes, not the eyes, not the body​—unless, of course, he’s charging. He walks in to take a fish, but he may wallop you instead.”

“Do any of your workers go in with Chow?”

“Absolutely not.”

“He looks docile.”

“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Who can tell? He’d make a good poker player. We do have bears we go in with, the black bears. We take them swimming in our pond, if they want to go.”

“If they want to go?” I queried.

“That may sound funny, but some caged animals never want to leave their cages. It’s their territory and they won’t leave it. It’s their ‘home sweet home.’

“Over here there are several black bears. See that one with the ear tag? It’s a federal tag. She was a state bear in one of the parks. Her mother, apparently, was fed out of cars. When her mother had her, she was shown how to get goodies out of cars, how to put her claws in the grooves around a car door and rip the door off. Or any other part of the car she could rip open. She had been taught that inside every car there were goodies. Then she had babies​—see those two young males? They are hers​—and she taught them what her Mom taught her: find a car, rip it open, get the goodies that are inside.

“But park rangers frown on this. They trap such bears and haul them off to the back country, hoping they will not return. But most of them do, and think nothing of traveling 50 to 100 miles to get back to the cars and the goodies. Then it’s destroy the bears, or find another home for them. Most of the time it’s destroy the bears. But this mother, Honeybear, was a favorite. The rangers knew her mother, had seen her as a tiny cub and watched her grow up. She was special, so she and her babies ended up here. Feeding the park bears,” Martine concluded, “may seem like a good turn, but it’s a bad one for the bears.”

Monkey See, Monkey Do

We climbed a slope to the monkey cages perched on a hillside.

“The old saying, ‘Monkey see, monkey do,’ isn’t just idle talk. Monkeys must observe other monkeys to become monkeys. Much of what they do, from gathering food to sleeping habits, to sexual behavior, to relationships within the troop​—it’s all observed and learned. Look around. We have pairs of monkeys everywhere, but you don’t see one baby. None of them are capable of normal reproduction, because they have never seen it.

At this point Martine stopped to instruct some workers.

“How many do you have working here?” I asked.

“Right now, 10. They volunteer their time and work for room and board.

“Over here,” she continued, “is a monkey that was completely naked when brought to us. It had sat in a small cage, and the lady that owned her spent most of her time sitting alongside. She sat and ate, and handed food to her monkey, who sat and ate. For eight years they sat and ate. The lady weighed about 300 pounds, and the monkey weighed 50. The monkey was also bored, so when she was not eating she picked the hair off her entire body. She’s been with us four years, and most of her hair is back.”

Looking across the way I saw some construction work in progress. “What’s that to be?”

“A hospital. When it’s done all veterinary work can be done here.”

“Are you a vet?”

“No. My mother felt it was not a nice profession for delicate young ladies. She had hopes that I would grow up to be such a young lady. Her hopes failed miserably, but I was an obedient girl and would not disobey what my mother said. And she said that no way would I be a vet. So I became what I am today, whatever that is.”

By now our tour was over, and Martine invited us to her and her husband’s home, located on the compound. She served us cold drinks​—a refreshing treat on this warm August afternoon.

An Exchange of Views

“Were you interested in animals from childhood?” I asked her.

“Yes, from early childhood. My father was in the diplomatic corps and we moved often. I was tutored, so I had few playmates. I turned to animals for companionship.

“In this operation here, people look at certain animals whose rehabilitation seems impossible, or small ones that to them are insignificant, and they ask, ‘Why are you keeping these? They’ll never be accepted by a zoo. Save the expense of their care. Euthanize them. And this ’possum, it’s not an endangered species, why waste money on it?’ Viewed in a businesslike way, they are right.

“Today so much is equated with dollars and cents. However, Wildlife Waystation is not set up to make money. It’s unique. It’s a charity, run solely on voluntary contributions. And in turn, it is charitable with lives. Now, where do you draw the line? Why is this leopard more important than that ’possum, or that sparrow less important than the ’possum?”

“The argument to save money sounds logical,” I said, “but it’s from the head, not the heart. Jehovah God himself, however, takes note even of the sparrow’s fall. His law to Israel safeguarded mother birds. It required consideration for the ox and the ass. Hunting for sport was typified by the condemned Nimrod. To hunt for food was allowed, but the blood was to be poured out on the ground out of respect for life. And one of the Proverbs says, ‘A good man takes care of his animals, but wicked men are cruel to theirs.’ (Pr 12:10a) So often ‘practical’ people concentrate on the material, to the neglect of the spiritual. When you callous the spirit you lose the richness of life. The spiritual, in the final analysis, is more practical than the material.”

She thought for a while, then observed: “Obviously, you grasp the essence of this place. You understand what I’m trying to do.” She paused, then continued: “I think it’s imperative for people to have contact with animals that are wild, and places that are wild. I think it’s good for the human spirit. When I become incensed about those who kill wild things for sport or trophies, people will say to me, ‘What do I care if there are no mountain lions? I’ve never seen one in my life, and it’s nothing to me if there’s not a mountain lion left!’ But the day that these wild things and places are gone, they are gone forever, and we have lost a precious heritage.”

“Martine,” I said, “why do people want to feed the park bears, even though it’s not good for the bears? Why do they want these wild things as pets, when it almost invariably turns out bad for the animals? People don’t want to injure them, they want to relate to them. Zoos provide proper food that visitors can feed the animals, because they know people crave to do this. Why? It’s the way we are made.”

“I do not belong to your religion,” Martine responded, “nor do I belong to any religion. I have seen too many conflicting things throughout the world for me to accept orthodox religion. I believe in the earth and the sky, and that Somebody up there is running things. Even in our operation here I feel that. We need something, we don’t have it, and no money to get it with. At the crucial time someone comes along with it and asks, ‘Can you use this?’ And I answer, ‘Can a duck use webbed feet?’”

The End of All Abuse

“Well, as you know, Martine, Jehovah’s Witnesses are a Bible-oriented group,” I said. “We believe that God created us with this desire to relate to animals. When he made man he said to him, at Genesis 1:28: ‘Your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals.’ Man is now failing miserably to meet this charge. Instead, he has polluted the earth and destroyed many animal species and endangered many more. God will stop this, saying at Revelation 11:18: ‘The time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth!’”

On this note our visit to Wildlife Waystation ended. As the photographer and I drove away we reflected on all that we had seen and heard.

We were saddened by the animals that had been so abused by man. We were impressed with the people at Wildlife Waystation who worked so hard to help them. As commendable as it is, it is still only a drop in the bucket when viewed on a global scale. How delightful it will be when Jehovah acts to eliminate, earth wide, the abuse of animals and also of people who suffer under this present system of things! Many persons will then enjoy the paradise earth that Jehovah has purposed for appreciative humankind, for those who will carry out his charge to care for its plants and animals and who will love their neighbors as themselves.​—Isaiah 11:6-9; 45:18; Psalm 37:11, 28, 29; Proverbs 2:21, 22; Matthew 22:34-40.

Can the abused earth, its animals and its peoples, use that promised paradise? To borrow Martine’s colorful answer, “Can a duck use webbed feet?”

[Footnotes]

[Picture on page 20]

Martine and friend

[Pictures on page 21]

Sheena

Dynasty

[Picture on page 22]

Reesha

[Picture on page 23]

Honeybear

[Picture on page 24]

The Sad Monkeys