Love Affair With Animals Isn’t Monkey Business

The meter reader left this note on Lynn Ash’s gate: “Your turkey wouldn’t let me in.” Some turkey.

“It is a rhea,” Ash said. “His name is Big Foot. I don’t blame the meter reader. A rhea can take a chunk out of you. Rheas are not sociable, especially at nesting time. See how close he stays to his mate? Her name is Rosie.”

What Ash really wants, he says, is a cassowary.

“They are beautiful and strange birds. I guess the reason most people don’t keep them is because they can disembowel you.” It would not occur to Ash that that could happen to him.

Without Guile

Ash, at 45, is himself a strange and beautiful creature.

And rare. He is a person without guile. Animals sense this. And if you can find this unpronounceable place, which is off in the boonies 15 miles from Tampa, a visit with Lynn Ash will restore anyone’s perspective about man’s place on the planet.

Remember reading, about five years ago, of an animal attendant at Busch Gardens in Tampa who leaped into a cage to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a gorilla? That was Lynn Ash.

(Actually it was mouth-to-nostril resuscitation, and it was, sadly, unsuccessful. So Ash spent the next three nights in the adjoining cage consoling the widow.)

Artist in 1960s

Or you might remember Lynn Ash from the 1960s. He was a rarity in those days, too, an artist making a good living.

His paintings, during that turbulent decade, tended toward the sentimental. They reflected the things he considers life’s rewards: tree bark, spring buds, autumn leaves, scarecrows, wooden ice boxes, sunsets, animals. Especially animals. Among art collectors and animal lovers, the signature ‘Lash” was well known.

Then, one day in 1969, he put aside his brushes and quit. “The work had drained me,” he said.

What to do?

“Well, I decided to devote myself to animals. I seem to have a way with them, and they with me.”

Devotion Mutual

So he took a job at Busch Gardens, where 2,000 animals romp in Africa-like surroundings. Between man and animal, the devotion was mutual. That old gorilla, for example, seemed to require a morning back rub, which Lynn Ash provided.

The creatures seem to sense Ash’s comforting presence. A blind rhinoceros would amble up for a pat. Snoozing orangutans would raise trusting eyes when he passed through the crowds and follow him fondly until he was out of sight.

Zoo keepers marveled. When that old gorilla’s widow bore a son, the choice of a name was unanimous: Lash.

Even the store of animals at the theme park, however, didn’t satisfy Ash’s passion. He began envisioning a home. He did it as he might have envisioned a painting, seeing in his mind’s eye exactly what it would look like when it was done.

Well, he is more than halfway there, and he is not disappointed. He has turned an acre of ground into a Lynn Ash version of Eden.

“It’s just what I want, what I’ve always wanted,” he said.

Peacock the Doorkeeper

A snow-white peacock greets visitors from his chosen roost on the porch rail. Other peacocks decorate live oaks, hickories, elms, cypress.

Golden pheasants, Java green peacocks (“The purest strain in the world; the male was wild, from Java”), Pharaoh quail, vulturine guineas from Africa, green jungle fowl (“They are to chickens what wolves are to dogs”), reside in enclosures as painstakingly “natural” as any at Busch Gardens.

The rheas, flightless, have the run of the place. So does Remus, who is half shepherd and half timber wolf. So do the black-breasted red bantams and their chicks, no bigger than cotton balls, and the mallards, wood ducks, wild turkeys and, yes, bald eagles, attracted instinctively to Lynn Ash’s wild domain.

America’s Past

An eight-foot indigo snake slithers in the underbrush. “Keeps away the rattlers.”

Inside, Ash, the sentimentalist, has surrounded himself with America’s past--a working jukebox, an old pay phone, an old ice box, old beer signs, an old whiskey barrel. When the phone rings, an old parrot, Spanky, croaks hello.

Maybe it was the nearness of all those critters and all those comfortable relics, Lynn Ash isn’t sure. Whatever the inspiration, he could no longer resist the lure of a blank canvas.

“I felt as though a volcano were inside me. I had all these ideas for paintings, just bursting out.”

At Busch Gardens, his creative urge has burst out in the form of signs and educational exhibits of the sort that fetched handsome prices for the artist 20 years ago. At home, his work is interrupted only by the needs of his animal empire; the once-familiar signature, Lash, has reappeared on a steady stream of paintings.

Bedroom Will Be in Tree

“I have my house, my birds and my art.” he said. “Each one takes time from the attention I want to give the other.

“I haven’t yet gotten around to building my bedroom up in the branches of that live oak tree, but I can’t wait. I will paint there too.”

How will he get up there?

“A swinging rope bridge from the porch. It will go over an alligator pond.

“But I suppose nothing will ever be completely finished. The place, the animals, will always need something. There will always be another painting to do.

“That’s good. It means I’ll be doing the things I love to do until I die.”