Fugatives & Refugees

Animal Acts: When You're Sick of People-Watching

The day I spent with Portland elephant keeper Jeb Barsh, he compared the city to a zoo. Comparing the city government to zookeepers, Jeb said, essentially their job is the same: to keep a population as happy as possible inside a confined area. Portland's size is limited by the Urban Growth Boundary—our cage, so to speak—and somehow we've all got to coexist within this limited space. Here's a look inside the other zoo, plus a few more animal-related events.

The Elephant Men

"Working with elephants is an obsession," says Jeb Barsh. "It sucks you in. Dealing with their psyches is such an honor."

In keeping with Katherine Dunn's theory that every Portlander has three lives, Jeb's an elephant keeper, a writer of songs, fiction, and poetry, and a father to his two-year-old son. He went to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he wanted to write a children's book about elephants. For research he went to the local zoo to volunteer. That was eleven years ago.

Portlands status as an elephant factory Jeb calls "an accident of nature." In the late 1950s the zoo bought Thonglaw, a highly sexual bull, and four fertile cows, including Belle, who gave birth to Packy in 1962, the first elephant to be born and survive in captivity in forty-three years. Until then, no one knew much about an elephant's pregnancy.

Tom Nelsen, a volunteer in the Elephant House, says, "The veterinarian sat here for three months because we didn't know how long an elephant's gestation period would be."

Thonglaw sired fifteen calves before dying at the age of thirty. The first, Packy, has sired seven, including Rama, the zoo's twenty-year-old bull.

"Elephants are in a crisis on earth," Jeb says. "They're running out of habitat. In the wild an Asian elephant only lives twenty-one years out of a possible seventy." He says, "My job isn't to phantom a perfect world for them. My job is to take where they are and make the best of it. I have to do today what I can do right now."

Jeb has a scar running through his top lip, near the right corner. Movie star handsome, he has longish hair curling over each ear and resting on his collar. He has gray eyes and a rough two-day start to a goatee. Maybe it's his shorts or his muscular legs from hiking and rock climbing, but every couple of seconds a different woman steps up to ask him something.

Between questions, he says, "There's a tendency among those of us who work with animals to disappear into our animals. That's why I like to keep one foot out here among people. To continue to spread the word to people about the mystery and joy of elephants. It's an honor to be here."

He says, "Every day of an elephant's life, it's collecting memories. We just try to keep mixing it up for them so their lives are interesting. They have the largest brains of any mammal on earth. We administer to their heads, not just their bodies. Every day, I know how these seven feel. From those feelings we plan our day."

In the Elephant House, Jeb's staff includes Tom, Bob, and Steve—three very big men. They care for the zoo's seven elephants, three males and four females. The females are social and will hang together, but the males each stay off alone unless it's time to mate. In 2002 the zoo's most famous elephant, Packy, celebrated his fortieth birthday. Krista Swan, the zoo's event coordinator, says, "Picture this fourteen-thousand-pound elephant eating a cake frosted with peanut butter, with raw carrots as candles, while thousands of people sing 'Happy Birthday,' all of them wearing huge, floppy elephant ears made of recycled paper." She says, "Elephants communicate by moving their ears. God only knows what Packy thought they were all saying to each other."

Elephants can live for sixty or more years. Keep April 14 free, and you too can wear the big ears and sing to Packy.

The zoo's smallest elephant is Chendra (meaning "Bird of Paradise" in Malay), an Asian elephant who was just a calf when she and her mother raided a Malaysian palm oil plantation. Her mother was shot dead, and Chendra was blinded in one eye and maimed in one leg. She was kept in a children's school until she was too big, then moved to Portland, where the zoo hoped she'd become best friends with Rose-Tu, another female Asian elephant the same age. The problem is, Rose-Tu is the daughter of Me-Tu and Hugo. "Rose-Tu is a brat," Krista says. "And she just harasses Chendra." Rose-Tu's favorite attack is to grab Chendra's tail. She'll hold the tail tight between her rear legs and reach back with her trunk to pluck out the tail's sensitive black hairs.

"At first," Krista says, "people talked about writing a series of children's books about Chendra and her best friend Rose-Tu... Then they thought: maybe not..."

Jeb doesn't worry. "Rose-Tu's a healthy kid," he says. "She's pushing and prodding her environment."

Chendra, he says, is a "pocket elephant," from a landlocked population of genetically unique elephants, and she'll probably be a smaller adult. Her blind eye is filled with pink and white muscle. Her good eye is brown and may turn a bright gold in maturity. She's only one ton, while Rose-Tu at the same age is two tons.

"I don't know why," Jeb says, "but they gave Chendra my birthday, February 20, so she's a Pisces."

About Hugo, Jeb Barsh says, "He's the 'Anti-Packy.' Some people call him 'Hugo the Horrible,' but he's my favorite bull. He's got such an energy field when you're with him. He's like a hot rock!" Jeb says, "He is the truth! He's energy personified! He's a hot daddy! He's a ride in a fast car!"

Hugo was captured in Thailand at about age four, and came to Portland via another zoo and a circus. "Everything I could say about Packy," Jeb says, "you could say the opposite about Hugo."

Hugo has a straight tail. Packy and all his descendants have a genetic trait for crooked tails. As a young elephant the tip of Hugo's trunk—equivalent to a human's thumb— was bitten off, so he's a little clumsy at grabbing items.

Jeb, Tom, Bob, and Steve explain how elephants walk on just the tip of their toes, protecting the sensitive pad in the center of their feet. They can stop a rolling apple without bruising it. Their trunks have forty thousand muscles, and can weigh five hundred pounds and hold five gallons of water. Each elephant has only four teeth, all of them huge. They go through six sets of these teeth and typically die of starvation after wearing out the last set. Up to 80 percent of their communication is via "infrasound," subaudible sounds that for years led people to think elephants had ESP and could read each other's minds.

"An elephant's brain is four and a half times bigger than mine," Jeb says. "It's fifty percent more convoluted, so they're incredible problem solvers." He explains, "The elephant's brain has all these pathways for storing memory. As herbivores they don't need to be 'wily.'" One reason why elephants carry so much memory is because they're so destructive to their environment that they need to constantly know where to find more food.

"They're touchingly similar to human beings," Jeb says. "They show a great deal of affection for each other. They're curious. They stay together as a family unit and won't abandon an elderly member. They even seem to mourn the death of each other."

Asian elephants have been crowded out of their habitat for centuries, and now only forty thousand are left in the world. As a pragmatist, Jeb Barsh talks about Charles Darwin's idea that extinction is a natural, acceptable event. And maybe there is no more place for these huge, charismatic animals that require so many resources to live.

About the Portland zoo, Jeb says, "This isn't Utopia, but for them there is no Utopia left."

At THE Zoo

If you want to see animals and not people, go to the zoo early and come in the cool spring or fall. According to Krista Swan, event coordinator for the Oregon Zoo, most of the animals are "corpuscular," meaning they're most active at dawn or dusk. Before the zoo opens at nine, the keepers hold the animals backstage while they clean each exhibit. At nine the animals are released into their fresh habitats and are most likely to be active and awake.

Knights Boulevard, in front of the Oregon Zoo, is named for Dr. Richard Knight, a former sailor who ran a drugstore on SW Morrison Street near Third Avenue. For sailing ships a pet was an important mascot, usually a monkey or a parrot. Sailors would leave their pets with Knight and never return for them. In 1885, Knight fenced the vacant lot next to his store, bought a grizzly bear for $75 and a cinnamon bear for $50, named them Brown and Grace, and started a zoo. In 1887 he donated his menagerie to the city, but he still had to feed and clean the animals, which were kept in the cages of a failed traveling circus, on forty acres the city set aside as City Park. By 1893 the park inventory included "3 wheelbarrows, 1 auger (bad order), 1 pump, 6 deer, 5 axes, 1 grindstone, 2 padlocks, 1 force pump, 1 grizzly bear, 300 flower pots, 1 seal."

Unless you want to see crowds of irritable people, do not come to the zoo in the hot summer months. Do not drive your car. Parking is limited and people will circle forever before they park, then buy a ticket and walk through the gate very cranky. Instead, take the westside MAX train. Park downtown, or park in the western suburb park-and-ride lots (in Beaverton or Hillsboro) along the MAX line. Get off at the zoo stop and ride the elevator up. For another good train ride, park at the Washington Park Rose Garden and walk to the hillside zoo train station. You can avoid the crowd and buy your ticket here, then ride the miniature Wild West steam train or the streamlined retro-aluminum Zoo Liner through the forest and into the center of the zoo.

If you can't handle the morning, bring a picnic lunch and a blanket and come for a concert in the evening. After April 1 check out www.oregonzoo.org for each summer season of twenty-five concerts, including artists like Ray Charles, the Cowboy Junkies, and Los Lobos.

Here are some animals you absolutely must meet.

The Penguins: Look for Mochika, a Humbolt penguin who refuses to mate or build a nest despite the keepers' best efforts. Instead, he hangs out in the keepers' kitchen. The keepers wonder if it's because he has a feminine name, but instead of another penguin—male or female—Mochika loves men's black boots. "I mean he really likes boots," Krista says. "In the biblical sense, he knows boots. You can feed him a fish, but you always have to watch out for your shoes."

The Sea Otters: Look for Thelma and Eddy. Like all southern sea otters from the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, they're named for characters in John Steinbeck novels. They live on an annual $25,000 diet of fresh mussels, clams, crab, and other shellfish. When they were placed in the new exhibit, keepers thought they were too young to mate. "Then Thelma turned up pregnant," says Krista. Thelma's pup is the first southern sea otter pup to be born and survive in captivity. Now zoos are hounding Portland. "It's a little embarrassing. They keep asking us what we did differently," Krista says. "The truth is, we don't know. We did it without even trying."

The Black Rhinos: Pete and Miadi have been reintro-duced to each other after having a baby several years ago. Since then, Miadi flirts: She bumps and rubs against Pete, trying to make him "flamen" and smell her pheromones. "It's when animals, cats included, kind of lift their upper lip and sniff hard," Krista says. It's not until Miadi urinates in his face that Pete chases her. After that, Miadi plays coy and hard to get until Pete gives up. "It's like Miadi's saying, 'You're not going to pay any attention to me? Well, smell my pee!'" Krista says and laughs. "See," she says, still pretending to be Miadi, "I knew you wanted some."

The Monkeys: In the Amazon Flooded Forest, look for J.P., a female howler monkey that jumps on everyone's head the moment they enter the exhibit. Keepers or volunteers, no one knows why, but J.P. has to sit on everyone's head.

Also look for Sweet Tillie, a baby swamp monkey. "She seems to enjoy causing as much trouble as possible," Krista says. Especially when she swings from the tail of the rival colobus monkeys and expects her father to defend her.

And don't miss Charlie the chimpanzee. "Charlies kind of famous for playing games with the people he likes," Krista says, "and throwing fecal matter at the people he doesn't." He knows a little sign language, and if he likes you, he'll introduce himself. He points at himself and signs the letter C with one hand against his chest. If Charlie points to the door that separates his inside and outside areas, he's challenging you to a race. Go ahead and run, but if you run and beat him to the next area, he screams and thrashes with rage.

The Wolves: Look for Marcus, an almost completely black male wolf. But please, Krista says, don't call him by name and do not howl. "People go to the exhibit and howl," she says, "and it's really disruptive. This is how wolves communicate. People have no idea what they're saying."

The Sea Lions: Look for Julius and Stella, both Stellers sea lions. You can call Julius. "If you call his name," Krista says, "Julius preens and poses. It's as if he knows you're praising him."

The Peacocks: Due to an exploding population of free-roving pea fowl, plus complaints from the neighbors, all the peacocks got tiny vasectomies in 2001. The birds strut and fly, upstaging the concert artists. Krista says, "It was really getting out of control."

The Bears: Every year the zoo hosts a "Bear Fair," where people can bring their stuffed teddy bears. Krista says, "At first I thought, What a stupid idea! That's not the mission of a zoo." Since then, she's warmed up to the idea because it does teach people specifically about bears. "Did you know sun bears have sticky tongues?" she says. "It's so they can eat ants." The stuffed bears, she tolerates. "Adults with no children show up with their stuffed animals—it's just their excuse to carry around their teddy bears in public."

It used to be tradition for the Rose Festival princesses to enter the bear habitat and, well... mingle. "In the archives," Krista says, "we have all these pictures of the princesses in the 1940s in the bear grotto. They're all in their high-heeled shoes and tailored suits, hugging and patting the bears on the head." She says the zoo no longer puts the teenaged beauty queens into the exhibit with live grizzlies. "Well," she says, "not unless we really don't like them."

Feral Cat Races

On the opening day of the Portland Beavers baseball season, come check out the Feral Cat Alley at PGE Park, at SW Morrison Street at Eighteenth Avenue.

Cardboard cat-shaped cutouts, each one representing a section of the grandstand, race each other the length of the left field wall. Whatever section cheers loudest, their cat wins and someone in that section gets a prize. It's a regular event at the season opener and occurs more and more frequently during other events. The race course is only about a hundred yards, but that's far enough.

Chris Metz, manager of communications for Portland Family Entertainment, says, "You're talking about four overweight, out-of-shape ticket sellers carrying those big cardboard cats."

Ken Puckett, director of operations for PGE Park— who isn't above stopping the race with a cardboard Dober-man—tells the story of the real cats gone wild in the stadium.

The nature of a "seating bowl" always attracts vermin, Chris says. People drop food. The rats come. The cats follow. No doubt they've been in the stadium since the first grandstand was built in 1893, back when Tanner Creek used to flood the playing field. The cats were here in 1909 when President Taft spoke, and in 1923 when Warren G. Harding spoke. When the current twenty-thousand-seat stadium was built in 1926, they were here. For the years 1933 through 1955, when this was a dog-racing track, the cats were here. The cats watched Jack Dempsey fight here. They heard concerts by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, and Van Halen. The weeklong Billy Graham revival—the Bob Hope comedy routines— the cats have seen it all from under the grandstands.

"These aren't cats you'd pet," Ken says. "They're mean. A lot of people think they're cuddly, but these are almost like bobcats."

During renovation in 2000 a construction worker killed a resident feral cat, and word got out about the accident. The neighborhood feral cat coalition protested and worked with the stadium to trap the remaining twenty-two feral cats. Of those, Ken says, two were killed because they were too sick. The others got their shots. They got spayed or neutered and spent the next seven months living on a farm outside the city, at a cost of some $1,700 per pussy.

"This is not part of the Christian feral cat coalition," Ken says. "There are two coalitions. This is the other one."

With the renovation complete, the cats were released back into the stadium, now equipped with the "Feral Cat Alley," installed under the Fred Meyer Family Deck. At the rate of a pallet per month, Ken says, an automatic feeding station doles out "senior cat blend" cat food. Because so many of the cats are old, he's built a ramp to ADA standards that leads the cats up to their food.

In return, the cats do what cats have always done.

Since 2000 the stadium's eighty-five traps have caught only two field mice. For the price of cat food, the whole place is rat-free. In comparison, Ken says, places like the Rose Garden coliseum pay up to $100,000 a year to control their rats—and fail. "You wait until everyone's gone. Sit in your car in their parking structure," he says, "and you won't believe what you see crawling out of the ivy over there."

As the cats die off, new cats from the Northwest Portland neighborhood migrate to the stadium. Right now, the population is about fifteen, including "Sylvester."

"He's black and white," Ken says, "like Sylvester in the cartoon." Sylvester is there to meet the first people at every ball game. He follows you around. "He was probably somebody's house cat," Ken says, "and he misses people."

So while the Portland Beavers play baseball April through September, while the Portland Timbers play soccer and the Vikings play football, the cats will still be here.

"The cats were here first," Chris says. "They've always been here. This was just the right thing to do."

Doggy Dancing

Kristine Gunter has blond hair tied back in a ponytail, she has pale blue eyes and freckles, and her voice is slightly garbled because she speaks with one cheek full of wiener chunks. "My joke is," she says, "I could never get my husband to dance with me—so I got a dog instead."

Kristine and her five-year-old corgi, Rugby, dance to a rockabilly song called "We Really Shouldn't Be Doing This." Her command "between" sends the dog through her legs in one direction. The command "through" sends him through in the other direction. Commands like "spin" and "go by" make the dog pass or circle the handler. "Dance" brings the dog up on its hind legs. "Jump" makes it jump and slap its front paws against the handler's hands.

After each successful step, Kristine spits out a chunk of hot dog as a reward.

The official name is "Canine Musical Freestyle," and Portland dogs haven't stopped dancing since 2001 when Kristine starting giving lessons.

Unlike regular obedience training—where the dog stays to the handler's left—doggy dancing handlers have to prove they can work the dog from every angle or direction. They dance to everything from Strauss waltzes to disco to country-western music. One handler is training her dog to dance to opera. "Ultimately, the goal in freestyle is you want them to cue off a word or a small body motion," Kristine says. "You don't want someone out there shouting commands or doing really obvious body motions."

She and Leah Atwood demonstrate dancing with their dogs. Leah dances with her two-year-old Australian shepherd, Flare, to the song "I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)." In their show routine Flare wears a black bib and silver sheriff's badge. Leah wears a prisoners striped uniform. As they dance, each time she shoots Flare with her finger, he falls down dead. At the end of the routine Flare takes Leah away in handcuffs.

To find out about pet activities in the Portland area, Kristine recommends checking the NWDogActivities group within Yahoo!Groups on the Internet. The site lists upcoming pet activities and links to a calendar so you can plan your pet's vacation with yours.

To cut a rug with your dog, call Kristine Gunter at 503-788-3152.

With her cheek still stuffed with wieners, she says, "I'm the only dog-dancing teacher in town."

Pug Crawl

Beer and dogs make such a great combination. Now throw in a costume contest for pugs, a pug dog kissing booth, and a mob of pug owners with their dogs, and you have the annual Pug Crawl. Look for it around the third week in May, at the Rogue Ales Public House, 1339 NW Flanders Street. Phone 503-222-5910.

Pug Play Day

The last Sunday of each month, a sea of small dogs takes over Irving Park at NE Fremont Drive and Seventh Avenue. Starting around 2:00 p.m., several hundred pug dogs waddle in with their owners. Also welcome are similar small breeds, including chihuahuas, French bulldogs, and Boston terriers. Among the regulars look for Portland author Jim Goad, who wrote The White Trash Manifesto and Shit Magnet, there with his pug, Cookie.