Shelter From the Storm : Ranch Owner Who Cares for Sick Animals Has Landed in a Controversy Caring for Ducks From Venice

A sanctuary has risen quietly on a small corner of this arid plain, devoted to society’s animal castoffs. Retired horses have found a haven here, and so have homeless dogs, and two dozen stray cats from a Torrance refinery.

No one has paid much attention to this ranch-turned-refuge in rural Kern County--not, that is, until a politically charged cargo of ducks arrived from Venice last week. They were spirited there by Venice residents after state officials said the animals should be destroyed because they might carry disease.

The ranch’s operator, Barbara Eustis-Cross, says she simply wants to provide shelter for the 60 ducks, just as she does for the horses, the dogs, the cats. But the waterfowl have brought with them a bitter controversy over avian disease and animal rights that has attracted swarms of reporters to her ranch and caused some neighbors to fear for their own ducks.

“Things started speeding up with the cats, and they went insane with the ducks,” said Eustis-Cross. “ . . . The small-time gesture of a few ducks running around has turned into a nightmare.”

The commotion started when government wildlife officials announced they wanted to kill all 350 ducks in Venice’s canals because they may carry duck virus enteritis, which can kill ducks, geese and swans. Officials fear the ducks could pose a threat to the millions of wild waterfowl that annually travel the Pacific Flyway, a migratory route stretching from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

But Eustis-Cross vows to provide refuge for Venice’s ducks--all 350 of them, if necessary. Rather than kill them, she asks, why not isolate them and study their disease and look for potential cures?

“I think the most responsible thing the people did was to bring the ducks here, where they can at least be isolated and have no danger of infecting anyone else,” said Eustis-Cross, 45, who grew up in Orange County and has cared for animals most of her life.

She holds up the ducks as symbols of society’s ills.

“We have probably one of the most wasteful countries in the world,” she said. “We have a throwaway society. These are throwaway ducks.”

Eustis-Cross tramps around her 11-acre ranch in jeans and sunglasses, showing a visitor how her idealistic mission can become a logistic marathon.

She shows off a new “cat habitat,” a walled enclosure that is home to dozens of stray and wild felines brought to her by corporations and individuals. There, one wall is lined with dishpans filled with cat litter. At the same time she’s coping with the duck problems, she complains wryly, “We have to housebreak 76 cats.”

The ranch is operated by the LIFE Foundation, a nonprofit group that specializes in animal protection and environmental issues. The acronym stands for “Life Is For Everything.” Clearly, that’s the philosophy guiding Eustis-Cross, the foundation’s executive director.

She currently harbors the 76 cats, 60 ducks, 10 geese, 24 horses, two burros, six dogs and a cantaloupe-eating tortoise named Rocky. Nearly all were brought here because they were orphaned, homeless, abandoned, abused or in need of special training, she says. She cares for them with the help of one full-time volunteer, part-time volunteers and her 15-year-old daughter, Brooke Cross.

Eustis-Cross used to operate from a ranch in Onyx, Kern County, moving to Morningstar Ranch three years ago with her husband, Dan Goodwin, a welder and artist. Her first charges were horses. Since the mid-1980s, Eustis-Cross has worked with a federal Bureau of Land Management program designed to control the wild-horse population on public lands by allowing people to adopt the animals. She cares for injured, orphaned or sick horses in the program, feeding them special diets and arranging medical care for them until they can be put up for adoption.

Then the cats began arriving. Two dozen showed up this spring, after the Mobil Oil Corp. had discovered an estimated 100 feral felines roaming its sprawling Torrance refinery. Initially, the company tried to remove the cats for safety reasons. But four of the animals were destroyed at a local shelter, prompting a public outcry from South Bay cat lovers.

So Mobil began sending its cats to Morningstar; it eventually will ship all 100 to the ranch. The company also donated $25,000 to building Morningstar’s spacious “cattery,” described by one volunteer cat trapper as “a cat Hilton.”

The enclosure is dominated by 200 turquoise-colored plastic buckets with holes cut in them to provide shelter for the cats. There are hanging catnip toys and a garden containing four types of mint. Newly planted grapevines will provide wide leaves--and plenty of cool hiding places for the felines.

Sometimes, late at night, Eustis-Cross sits in the cattery in the dark, listening hard to hear if cats--some have respiratory problems--are sneezing. If she sits very still, she says, some cats will draw closer and a few will even perch on her lap.

“I love to watch the animals be animals,” she said, “not try to change them.”

Quiet moments like these, however, have been few since May 24, when animal advocates whisked the Venice ducks to the ranch, which is about six miles north of Inyokern.

Many of Inyokern’s 900 residents first learned the ducks had descended on their town when a front-page story appeared May 27 in the Ridgecrest-based newspaper, The Daily Independent, under the ominous headline, “Diseased ducks land at Inyokern animal farm.”

No sooner did the story appear than the telephone began ringing at the Country Feed Barn in Inyokern. About 50 customers called in only two days to ask how to guard their waterfowl and other animals against the virus, said feed store co-owner Norma Marquardt. Even the feed store’s hay-truck driver wondered if he should make his regular delivery to the ranch.

Although residents generally haven’t objected in the past to Eustis-Cross’ needy animals, the ducks are different, Marquardt says. “I think she ought to take them back,” she said. “I think it was a bad move, and everyone I talk to agrees.”

But Jo Mertz, who with her husband runs a eucalyptus farm across the road from Morningstar Ranch, says she is not bothered by the ducks, even though she keeps geese and mallards of her own.

“I don’t want anything to happen to mine, but I’m sure Barbara will make sure it wouldn’t,” Mertz said.

The Kern County Agriculture Department inspected the ducks’ new home last week and has “no problems with the ducks being there at this time,” said county Deputy Agricultural Commissioner Jack Marks. But the state Department of Fish and Game feels the ducks should not have been moved from Venice because of the danger of spreading the disease, said spokesman Patrick Moore.

Moore said that if he were a farmer in Inyokern, “I certainly would be nervous. I wouldn’t like it if I had pet ducks on a pond in that area.” The Venice fowl reside in five padlocked stalls in a horse barn; they include mallard mixes, Pekin ducks and a gaggle of honking geese that were also brought from Venice. None of the fowl has shown signs of illness, Eustis-Cross reports.

Holding a roll of yellow tape printed with the word “Caution,” she says she is taking pains to prevent the ducks from coming into contact with other birds.

“That yellow tape is to cordon off the whole area,” she said. “There are padlocks on the barn stalls. I mean, we are treating this beyond what Fish and Game hysteria has even asked for.”

Eustis-Cross said she has already clipped the ducks’ wings so they cannot fly and has covered the windows of the barn stalls with vinyl netting to prevent song birds from flying inside.

Duck droppings will either be burnt or sent to a hazardous-waste disposal site, she promises. And visitors will be required to don special paper surgical suits and disposable boots.

If experts can show Eustis-Cross that the ducks pose a legitimate health hazard, she says, she will not object to the animals’ extermination--by qualified professionals, using approved drugs.

And, if the ducks can live out their lives in quarantine, she’s willing to house them, although she still doesn’t know where, or how. So far, she has received donations totaling only $1,300 to care for the ducks. She daydreams about building a duck habitat similar to the Mobil-funded cattery, complete with a filtered pond and plantings.

Asked if she would take the ducks again, she paused to think. Then she said: “In my own selfish little life that loves peace, and quiet, and tranquillity--no . . . But the part of me that says we have to change things? I’d do it again tomorrow.”

The Flight Path to Inyokern

Trying to block the spread of a viral epidemic that has killed about 50 of the semi-tame ducks that inhabit Venice canals, the state Department of Fish and Game tried last month to round up and kill the remaining 300 or so ducks in the flock.

Canal residents and other animal rights activists mobilized on May 24 to physically block the roundup; they then obtained a temporary restraining order that prevents the state agency from capturing or killing the ducks.

Later that day, Fish and Game officials obtained a quarantine order from the County Department of Health Services, forbidding the removal of any ducks from the canals while the court order is in effect.

On May 24, however, 60 of the ducks were smuggled out of Venice and taken to a refuge in Kern County.

A hearing is scheduled Wednesday in Santa Monica Superior Court at which Fish and Game officials will seek to have the restraining order lifted.

Meanwhile, signs of disagreement among the duck defenders have emerged. On Tuesday, Duckwatch, an organization of canal residents that had been one of the parties seeking the restraining order, withdrew as a plaintiff in tha case and announced that it would support the state’s eradication plan.