Crooker and Preston looked at each other and decided that they would waive their rights and talk to us. The first one to speak was Crooker. “We didn’t take those fish in the refrigerator. They were given to us.”
“Who gave them to you?” asked Szody.
“We would rather not say,” replied Crooker.
“You guys are in possession of those fish and you are going to be held responsible. Suit yourselves,” I said.
After mulling over their choices, Crooker turned and pointed to the pickup parked next to their trailer. A camper was mounted in the bed and there were no lights on inside. Little did Szody and I know that two more pipe fitters were watching us through the back window of that camper.
“What are you trying to say?” asked Szody.
“Those guys are the ones who took fish from the hatchery last night,” said Crooker. “They came back with five fish and gave us two of them. They’re the ones who told us how to do it.”
I instructed Crooker and Preston to remain in their trailer until we returned. Szody and I walked over to the pickup and knocked on the camper door; we could hear movement inside so we knew someone was there. A few minutes later, a light came on and the door opened.
“Department of Fish and Game,” I announced. “We would like to talk to you. Would you please step outside?” Two men stood at the camper door, both about the same age as Preston and Crooker. The taller of the two had greasy, bleached-blond hair, tied in a pony tail. He cringed as his bare feet hit the cold ground.
“Dude, hand me my shoes before you come out.”
“Where are they,” asked his partner, beginning to turn around and re-enter the camper.
“Never mind the shoes, I said, “stay out here where we can see you. Your buddies told us about you two going into the hatchery last night and taking a bunch of fish. We’re going to search anyway, so please make it easy on everyone and show us where the fish are.”
The barefoot man looked down at a tarp that was covering something. When my partner pulled the tarp back, we discovered a large ice chest, containing two individual limits of Crowley Lake trout. At the bottom of the ice chest, under several inches of ice, we found what we had been looking for—three trophy-sized brood fish, all placed in individual plastic bags.
“We thought it would be neat to take home a few big fish,” the barefoot man explained. “I guess that wasn’t a very good idea.”
With all four men identified, Szody and I seized the five stolen trout as evidence. “Here’s what is going to happen,” I said. “Formal criminal complaints will be filed with the local district attorney’s office. All four of you will be charged with unlawful removal of fish from a state fish hatchery. We will discuss the matter with the Hot Creek Hatchery manager. He and the DA will decide whether or not you will also be charged with burglary or grand theft.”
It was 2:00 a.m. when Szody and I left Crowley Lake and headed for the motel. We were looking forward to a few hours of sleep before Sunday’s weekend finale.
“That was a good case,” said Szody, yawning.
“We could have been satisfied with just busting the first two guys,” I said. “That’s why I’m always talking about following the trail to the absolute end. It’s hard enough to catch ’em. When we do, we need to shake ’em until everything falls out of their pockets. You know what I mean?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Szody. “Let’s go by the hatchery tomorrow and see what the manager wants to do with those idiots. We need to pick up our sleeping bags anyway.”
“They’ll pay a couple hundred bucks each and that will be that,” I said, leaning back in the seat and closing my eyes. “The hatchery manager won’t want to take it any further.”
We decided to skip Sunday morning and sleep in. It was almost noon before Szody and I arrived back at Crowley Lake. The sky was clear and it was going to be a beautiful, fifty-five degree afternoon—one of those times when the air was so comfortable that I forgot how intense the Eastern Sierra sun could be. By the end of the day my face would be fried and beet red. Some of the camps were already packing up to leave and everywhere we looked people were cleaning fish. The perfect time to find out who had gotten greedy over the weekend.
Friendly conversation was not only good public relations, it was a great way to find things out. Conscientious, law-abiding fishermen generally don’t like it when somebody near them is taking home more than his fair share of fish. If provided with a convenient opportunity, they will usually tell enforcement officers about it.
We practiced our communication skills all afternoon, slowly driving through campsites, showing the colors and stopping to talk to people. Many of them were only too happy to provide us with information about the people in the next camp who had failed to stop at the legal limit. By dark we had added sixteen over-limit cases to an already productive weekend.
Chapter Seven
Metro Wardens
I
On January 1, 1978, I was promoted to patrol lieutenant and assumed my new supervisorial duties in the metropolitan areas of Riverside and San Bernardino. The next three years would bring more animal adventures than I had ever dreamed of.
“Metro” wardens, which I would supervise, not only worked hunters and fishermen, they enforced laws dealing with exotic mammals—African lions, tigers, wolves, leopards, apes and even elephants. Native and exotic reptiles—from king snakes to king cobras—were also part of the job, along with regular inspections of pet shops, airport shipping docks and falconry facilities.
I still recall the first day of my new assignment. I had arranged a meeting with Warden John Slaughter, one of the officers I would supervise. Ten years older than I, Slaughter was a former ballplayer who had grown up in Riverside and knew the area like the back of his hand. The six-foot-two-inch southpaw had been scouted by the pros but settled for a job with the Highway Patrol, before lateraling over to Fish and Game. With much in common, this character and I would share a lot of laughs over the next three and a half years.
As I approached Slaughter’s vehicle, I received instantaneous on-the-job training: there, in the bed of his patrol truck, lay a nine-foot alligator with its mouth and legs bound. Slaughter had just seized the huge reptile from a local resident and was in the process of transporting it to a city animal-control facility.
Laughing, Warden Slaughter slapped me on the back and said, “Welcome to Riverside, Lieutenant!”
What is there for a game warden to do in the city? You might be surprised. During the late 1970s there were more captive African lions in the Los Angeles basin—including Riverside and San Bernardino Counties—than there were wild lions in Africa. For several decades, birds, mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians had been imported into California with very few restrictions.
Metro wardens were responsible for enforcing a set of relatively new laws and regulations dealing with the importation, transportation and possession of restricted, live wild animals. Some species were restricted because if they escaped, they could become established and compete with or destroy native wildlife. Others were restricted because they could pose a threat to California’s multi-billion dollar agriculture industry. Species such as large carnivores and poisonous snakes were restricted for public safety reasons. All live wild animals, imported or possessed, were subject to strict regulations regarding their general welfare and humane treatment.
A permit system was established to make allowances for people in the entertainment industry, zoological institutions, educational facilities and people who possessed these animals before the laws came into effect. Wildlife protection officers referred to this part of their job as “Animal Welfare.”
Animal Welfare permits were issued based on specific cage and enclosure requirements. These requirements were designed to prevent escape and ensure the humane treatment of each animal. Some species, particularly poisonous snakes, were strictly prohibited, and permits were issued only under special circumstances. Animal Welfare gene
rally amounted to about one fourth of a metro warden’s duties, but keeping track of big cats, wolves, monkeys, chimps, snakes and alligators—to name a few—was time consuming and extremely complicated.
II
There were three large operators in the Riverside/San Bernardino area and probably hundreds of people with individual wild animals. The big operators maintained small compounds, surrounded by ten-foot-high fences to keep the animals in and the neighbors out. Their menageries of exotic animals were ostensibly kept for the entertainment industry, but we suspected that offspring were regularly sold and traded illegally out the back doors.
Shortly after arriving in my new district, I conducted an inspection at the compound of a man named Lundberg. Mr. Lundberg was a little guy who kept a lot of very large African lions on his property. Most of these lions were females, but he had one male I would not soon forget. I asked to see Mr. Lundberg’s veterinary certificate, which was supposed to be renewed annually. A tiny smirk appeared on the lion owner’s face. “It’s right over there,” he said, pointing to a framed document hanging on a nearby wall.
In order to examine the certificate, I had to brave an eighteen-inch-wide pathway between two chain link cages, each containing a lion. A lioness occupied the cage on the left; she was sleeping on top of a wooden box. Inside the cage on the right was the largest lion that I had ever seen. It appeared to be a young male, with little or no mane. The giant feline had a head the size of a basketball and must have weighed well over five hundred pounds. This lion also appeared to be sleeping.
As I traversed the pathway and began reading the veterinary certificate, the massive cat slammed against the chain link fence, mere inches from where I was standing. With its thunderous growl he announced his intention of ripping me to shreds and eating me for lunch. I stared into a huge orifice, sporting four five-inch canines that looked more like sabers than teeth. Shuffling sideways, I quickly exited the pathway. Warden Slaughter, who had witnessed this spectacle, told me later that I had been so concerned with the male lion, I had failed to notice the full grown female trying to get at me from the opposite cage. Lundberg, vastly amused, obviously knew exactly what was going to happen when he sent me over there.
I eventually regained my composure and finished the inspection. Later that day, Slaughter and I shared a good laugh. I told him I was glad it had happened. I’d learned a valuable lesson about wild animals; they are completely unpredictable and have the strength and speed to end your life in the blink of an eye. That is particularly true of the big cats—African lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and mountain lions—and mature chimpanzees. Those cute little chimps, like the one that Tarzan used to pal around with, grow up to be five times stronger than the average man and extremely dangerous.
A few years later, after I had transferred to Northern California, Lundberg’s luck with big cats finally ran out. While throwing meat to one of his adult African lions, he got careless and exposed his right arm. As a house cat would grab a dangling rubber mouse, the lion sunk its massive teeth into Lundberg’s arm. Slamming him against the outside of the cage, the lightning fast and incredibly strong animal tore his arm off at the elbow.
III
One November day, we received an anonymous tip about a man in Fontana who was keeping a leopard in his garage. Warden Slaughter and I made a house call. Before ringing the doorbell, we noticed an unattached garage at the east side of the house. Both the front and side doors were closed.
A burly, middle-aged man wearing a three-day-old beard answered the door, The TV was blasting, and beer cans and a pizza box littered the coffee table behind him.
“We’re with the Department of Fish and Game. It has come to our attention that you are in possession of a leopard,” said Warden Slaughter.
“Just a minute,” said the man, a perplexed look on his face. “Let me turn the TV down. Who told you I had a leopard?”
The man’s expression was a dead giveaway.
“I don’t know anything about any leopard!”
I asked to see his identification. He produced a California Commercial Drivers License. “Are you a truck driver, Mr. Wycoff?” I asked.
“Yeah, I am. What difference does that make?”
“Would you mind if we take a peek inside your garage?”
“All right, I’ll tell you the truth,” said Wycoff. “I was in Texas and I ran into a guy who owed me money. Instead of paying me he gave me this young leopard that he had in the back of his rig. He said he bought it from some carnival.”
Wycoff rattled on with another five minutes of BS before I interrupted and asked if the cat was inside his garage.
“Yes,” he finally admitted.
“Do we have your permission to look?”
“Yeah, go ahead.” He sighed and looked at the floor.
My earlier experience with Lundberg’s lions stood me in good stead. With Warden Slaughter standing behind me, I partially opened the side door of the garage and peeked inside. Sunlight penetrated across the cement floor and lit up the building, but I saw no sign of a leopard. Taking a half step inside, I immediately got the feeling I was being watched: out of the corner of my left eye I could see two large greenish colored eyes staring down at me. The half-grown leopard had jumped from the garage floor, eight feet into the air and perched itself on one of the crossbeams. I carefully backed out of the garage and closed the door.
Wycoff was charged with unlawful possession and importation of a prohibited species. The juvenile leopard was later transported to a Los Angeles area wild animal care facility; all the zoos were filled to capacity and unwilling to permanently house any of the confiscated big cats. This was particularly true of African lions, which seemed to breed like rabbits in captivity.
IV
I ran into many more “animal people” during my three and a half years in Riverside/San Bernardino. Several of them lived in the Perris area, a few miles south of Riverside. During the late seventies, Perris was still fairly rural, providing owners of exotic animals with the opportunity to put an acre or two between themselves and their closest neighbors. It was not unusual to drive out to Perris and see a variety of unusual animals grazing or lolling about in the fields—exotic deer, mouflon sheep, ostriches, emus, and bison. There were also wolves and a host of exotic cats, maintained in cages and enclosures.
One Perris resident, affectionately known as the Tiger Lady, had installed a twenty-foot-high chain-link fence all the way around her little one-acre patch of heaven. Sultan, her five-hundred-pound Bengal tiger, had the complete run of the place, inside and outside the house. He even slept with his owner in her king-sized bed.
One day I was standing in the Tiger Lady’s front yard, inspecting her Animal Welfare Permit, when I felt a vice-like grip on my right thigh. I looked down to find Sultan’s enormous maw wrapped around my leg. Sultan’s little game ended when his owner zapped his hindquarters with a cattle prod—apparently standard equipment for tiger handlers. The tiger released my leg, but my thigh was black and blue for several weeks afterwards. Sultan’s canine teeth had been removed. I was not in favor of this procedure, but in this case it had worked out well for me. Besides, how many people can say they’ve been mauled by a five-hundred-pound Bengal tiger and lived to tell about it?
Before leaving, I jokingly asked the Tiger Lady if she had any problem with burglars or uninvited guests. Not surprisingly, she answered, “No.”
Most people didn’t like the idea of big cats moving into their neighborhoods, so we often received calls. An anonymous tip led Warden John Slaughter and me into the strange world of Whitley Milton. According to our source, Milton had recently acquired a leopard and kept it at his new house in Perris. The house was way out at the end of a gravel road.
As we pulled up in front of the house, Warden Slaughter commented that it looked like some contractor had just slapped the thing together, graded a ten-foot path around it and left it sitting out in the weeds.
Although no cars were pre
sent, Slaughter and I decided to knock. The doorbell didn’t work so Slaughter tapped lightly on the picture window next to the front door. Sheets covered all of the windows; fortunately the sheet covering the front picture window had fallen partially down. Warden Slaughter peered inside and noticed that the living room was completely devoid of furniture. The floor seemed to be made of dark-colored tile.
As Warden Slaughter was about to tap on the window a second time, a five-foot monitor lizard shot across the living room floor and down the hall. The tile floor was so slippery that the giant reptile had spun out.
“Did you see that?” asked Slaughter.
I laughed. “Unbelievable!” I said. “How would you like to clean that house?”
We left and returned several times over the next few days before finally finding Milton at home. A fortyish dark-skinned man wearing a pink Hawaiian shirt answered the door.
“We are with the Department of Fish and Game,” said Warden Slaughter. “Are you Whitley Milton?”
“Yes, I am,” answered Milton, a puzzled look on his face.
“Would you mind if we come in and talk with you for a few minutes?” asked Slaughter.
Neither of us really wanted to go inside the house, imagining what it might smell like, but we figured it would provide us with an opportunity to look around. Milton asked us to wait a minute while he put his lizard in another room. He finally led us into a dimly lit den, furnished with a couch and a few chairs. A large bird cage containing a scarlet macaw hung at one end of the room.
“That’s a beautiful bird,” said Slaughter, hoping to gain Milton’s confidence with a little friendly chit chat.
“Oh, thank you,” said Milton. “That’s Reggie; I’ve had him for over twenty years. Please sit down. Can I get you gentlemen something to drink?”
Badges, Bears, and Eagles Page 9
