Peace at last
Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch is home to hundreds of animals that once were abused or up for slaughter
Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch is home to hundreds of animals that once were abused or up for slaughter.
MURCHISON — Ben Callison and I are driving around in the Ford F-350 looking for Ziggy the zonkey. We’re not having much luck finding Ziggy, the product of an unholy alliance between a zebra and a donkey or, for that matter, the zony that also lives here somewhere. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what a zony is.
But not finding Ziggy is OK because it just gives me more time to hear Ben’s stories about the hundreds of animals here at the Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch in Murchison, near Tyler. At 1,310 acres, it’s the largest and most diverse animal sanctuary in the United States, though you may never have heard of it. Or seen it: It’s tucked off a country road off a country road and rarely open to the public.
Ben, a volunteer since 2004 and the director of the sanctuary for two years, seems to know the individual stories of each of the hundreds of animals. That can’t strictly be true — there are some 500 donkeys (Ben prefers “burros”) and horses alone — but close enough.
All the stories have the same arc, from abuse and neglect — or worse — to peace and contentment. As Amory
planned it, this is where the story writes its own ending.
Cleveland Amory, prolific writer, philanthropist and grandfather of the modern animalwelfare movement in the U.S., read Anna Sewell’s “Black Beauty” as a child and was forever changed. Even now, the gates to the ranch bear one of the last lines of that novel: “Here my story ends. My troubles are all over, and I am at home.” Amory founded the Fund for Animals, under which the ranch operates, in partnership with the Humane Society of the United States, in 1964. He died in 1998, and his ashes are sprinkled here.
Along the way, Ben and I stop at the sanctuary’s new veterinary hospital, of which he is rightly proud. “A huge leap in our ability to care for the animals,” he says. An A&M grad, he worked for some years as an architect in Dallas. The hospital is his design, of course. It can handle any animal up to the size of a water buffalo. (An equine handling facility also is under construction, with the help of the famous animal-behavior expert Temple Grandin.)
We pause in front of a huge black-and-white photo of an African elephant.
“This is Babe. She was our last elephant,” Ben says. Babe spent many years as a circus animal, during which her feet and legs were horribly and permanently damaged. Her feet bled when she walked. When she arrived at the sanctuary, the staff gave her feet nightly Epsom salt soaks, which she enjoyed so much that even when her feet were markedly better, the staff kept up the soaks.
“She taught me a lot about trust and how to forgive,” Ben says. “If she could reach out her trunk to me, a human man, after what she had been through, and be excited to see me, I have no excuse not to forgive.” Smart guys
It’s hard to pick out one most-horrible story from all these animals, but a strong case could be made for the chimpanzees — if only for their intelligence, sensitivity and long lives. Kitty and Lulu were caught in the wild at about age 10. Kitty had 16 babies for “research.” Midge was captive-bred and spent 20 years in a cage.
“Which is more sad, being ripped from the wild or never knowing it?” Ben asks.
There’s a joke among the staff: If you give a large stick to a tiger, it will break it in two to show you its strength. If you give it to a chimp, it will whittle the stick down to the shape of a key and escape. They’re that smart.
“They get the highest level of care of any animal here,” he says. The chimps have an elaborate play area that includes a simulated termite mound. The chimps can, as they would in the wild, poke sticks into the holes and retrieve goodies. (No termites. Peanut butter, bananas or honey.)
The sanctuary houses other primates, too: baboons, gibbon apes, capuchin monkeys, macaques. They come from zoos, the exotic pet trade, breastcancer research, hepatitis B research, dental research, private homes. One female macaque arrived at 44 pounds, twice the maximum normal weight. She couldn’t walk. Now lots of excess skin is the only sign of her past.
Soon the primates will have their own 35-acre area to roam.
Ben can’t say enough kind things about the staff, volunteers and interns. “They’ll change up the environment to improve the lives of the animals,” he says. “Everything is about the animals.”
One beloved animal who recently died was Roo, a one-armed kanga- roo who had been used in “boxing” matches until his arm was badly broken in the ring and had to be amputated. Roo’s best friend was a blind goat, and he loved to paint. Equine haven
We’re back driving around among the horses and burros. “Bill! Ted!” Ben calls out, and two nearly identical (at least to me) horses approach the truck. They are disappointed not to get treats, but they do get their muzzles scratched. Bill and Ted are unusual, Ben says, because they came to the ranch as a duo and they’ve stayed together, their own social group of two. Most of the other equines form groups of eight to 10, led by an alpha. The pasture looks for all the world like a high school cafeteria.
Burros were the first animals at the ranch. In 1979, the U.S. government planned to kill off a large herd of burros at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. When Amory heard of this, he mounted a huge, unprecedented rescue. He hired helicopters and Vietnam-era pilots and engineered a massive airlift of the burros, 544 in all. They were brought to this ranch’s original 80 acres. The last one, Friendly, Amory’s favorite, died a few years ago.
None of the animals are allowed to reproduce. They are spayed, neutered or given contraception. The exception are the ostriches, who can’t readily be castrated (who knew?). Their eggs are subbed out.
We pass a trio of massive, gorgeous draft horses: Belgians, Ben says. They had been used in the production of Premarin, a hormone-replacement drug made with the urine of pregnant mares. These mares, perpetually pregnant, were kept in small stalls and never allowed out. (The practice is illegal now in the U.S., though not in Canada.) When the mares arrived at the ranch, one was pregnant. “That was the first foal she ever got to keep,” Ben says
We pass a beautiful horse whose unusual markings make him look as if he’s been hit with grayish-brown paintballs. A very rare and valuable leopard Appaloosa, Ben explains. Raised as a bucking bronco, he’d been rescued from a slaughterhouse. It’s a myth that only old and sick horses wind up slaughtered, he says.
Ben takes a cellphone call from his girlfriend, the Humane Society’s state director. They’ve been raising three puppies that Ben’s mother scooped up when they were going to be drowned. A woman from Austin wants to adopt one. This is good.
We pass a stunning sorrel horse. The granddaughter of the famous racing thoroughbred Native Dancer, she won purses totaling $200,000 in her career. She later became a brood mare, and there the trail goes cold. When she was rescued, she was nearly dead. Tiger, tiger
Now we’re heading toward the tiger cages. The sanctuary has four of the big cats: Alex, Gustavo, Natalia and Anastasia. “There are more tigers kept as pets in Texas than are left in the wild,” Ben says.
They’re completely useless from a conservation standpoint because they’ve been bred and bred — often to produce the coveted white tiger — so that the key subspecies are jumbled together.
By the end of the year, the tigers will have a 4-acre wooded sanctuary of their own on the property, and they’ll be able to live as natural a life as is possible outside their habitat.
Tigers have their own sublime magnificence. Alex, a 3-year-old former backyard pet, may be the most beautiful animal I’ve ever seen, and maybe the most deadly. Tigers don’t really read an adult human, face to face with them, as prey. Horses, too, are too much trouble. But when children come near, Ben says, the tigers get a little too interested.
Also, don’t turn your back on them. Ben demonstrates. “Watch this,” he says.
He turns his back and crouches down. Alex lunges. The cage bars break his jump. Should Alex succeed, Ben says, he would snip the spinal cord between two vertebrae, and sayonara.
Leaving the tigers, with our spinal cords intact, we enter another aspect of the sanctuary: the Doris Day Horse Rescue and Adoption Center, which takes abused and neglected horses and retrains them to be excellent candidates for adoption. Like the rest of the sanctuary, it’s pristine and pretty. “We’re trying to redefine the concept of the rescue horse,” Ben says, from a sad-sack pity case to a valuable, grounded animal.
“The goal is to have them here 90 days,” he says. Even after an animal is adopted, the center offers support. If the adoption doesn’t work out, the horse has to come back here. Doris Day herself has not visited the center — she lives in California, and she hates planes — but she is kept up on the progress.
About 30 horses are ready for adoption now.
We’re heading back to the main building, and we never found Ziggy. But the animals here have found peace.