Man’s Love of Wild Animals Not Hampered by Tame Job at Knott’s Petting Zoo

Growing up in the country in Olympia Fields, Ill., Jim T. Pickerell, 35, got hooked on animals. Since then he has visited more than 50 zoos throughout the country and worked for many of them.

But while his current job as supervisor at the petting zoo at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park is tamer than jobs at big zoos with great numbers of exotic animals, his outlook about animals is the same. The most exotic animals at Knott’s are a wolf, hawk, snake and lizard. “There are a lot people out there that want to learn about animals, and that’s why they come in here,” Pickerell said. “A place like this is a good beginning.”

But more important, he said, are the Knott’s-sponsored shows he presents at school assemblies and other gatherings to explain the preservation, care and desperate situation some wildlife is experiencing in this and other countries.

“There’s a real great need to educate children about wildlife,” he said, while showing a red-tail hawk loaned to the Knott’s zoo by the Department of Interior. “It’s birds of prey like this and other wild animals that will be in deep trouble if we don’t let them share the Earth with humans.”

Pickerell added, “It would be tragic if mankind today was responsible for eliminating animals in the 20th Century. We’re custodians of the environment now and it’s up to us to preserve it and pass it on.”

His own pets include two horses, two cats, two birds and four dogs.

Pickerell, who sometimes does bit acting with animals in television commercials, received formal training at Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley.

“I’m fortunate to have a career based on my personal belief in animals,” he said. “The impact I hope to create here (the petting zoo) is to bring an awareness to people about both exotic and domestic animals.”

Well, she probably isn’t the oldest person in the city, but Edith Eichler, “92 plus,” of Yorba Linda, who rode a 1915 Overland in the city’s recent Fiesta Day Parade, said she’s the oldest early citizen of the city. “We settled here in 1911, and I don’t know anyone as old as me that was here before then,” she said. So there.

Bonnie Lee and her 10-piece all-male orchestra played at the Paragon Ballroom in Monterey Park for 22 years straight until a shopping center displaced them. But she has never stopped playing.

“I remember the New Year’s Eve parties,” said Lee, “when we would have 1,500 people in the ballroom to dance to our beautiful music.” Now she plays piano with a small nameless band for senior citizens’ dances in Fullerton and Anaheim.

“We get good crowds (323 on a recent Sunday afternoon) at the senior citizen centers to dance and listen to our pretty music,” said Lee, of Orange, who declined to give her age. (“A lady never tells how old she is.”)

But she is willing to talk about her 22 years as an orchestra leader and proud that her entire band stayed intact over that time while playing “music you could enjoy listening or dancing to. It was a good group and we had a lot of fun.”

Lee said musicians were so good that each found spots with name bands when they were forced out of the ballroom. “They were all pros who played very pretty music.” Lee likes to use “pretty” and “beautiful” to describe the music her band played, but she doesn’t use the same terms for some of today’s music. “Kids playing today don’t even know what a waltz is. You couldn’t possibly dance to some of it,” she said. “It’s not pretty music.”

Lee said her current band plays “just about everything we played at the ballroom,” and noted that “the music brings back the days when they (senior citizens) were young. They like the memories.”

Besides that, she added, “It’s good exercise for them and it’s better then staying home and watching television. You ought to see them dance. They’re terrific.”

Kendra Howell, 24, was named Disneyland’s 1987 Ambassador to the World, which makes her the park’s official hostess, escorting dignitaries at the park and traveling throughout the United States and abroad. Prior to her selection as ambassador, Howell worked as a culinary hostess at Cafe Orleans at the theme park in Anaheim.

Culinary hostess? “That’s another way of saying she was a waitress,” said a park spokeswoman.

Acknowledgments--Thierry Fitton, of Huntington Beach and Vonda Hobson and Lauren Senator, both of Orange, were honored for volunteer work in child abuse prevention by COPES (Child Or Parental Emergency Services). COPES operates a 24-hour crisis center for children.