Creature Comfort

To visitors at the Orange County Fair’s petting zoo, the wallaby, deer, pot-bellied pig and 62 other animals are cuddly, momentary diversions.

But for the eight women who are their caretakers, these animals with their gentle temperaments have had a greater effect. They have, the women say, turned their lives around.

Sue Tooley says the animals have taught her and the other women a thing or two about self-esteem, caring and responsibility.

“Some girls came from broken-up homes or were too sheltered and shy. Some were picked at by people, and some just wanted to work with animals,” Tooley said. “All the girls were in search of a family.”

The women became involved in the zoo in Cave Junction, Ore., where it was part of a wildlife park. The owner, Diane Linderman, hired many young women who simply wanted to work with animals or who were victims of violence or sexual abuse or suffered emotional problems.

“There are thousands of kids who don’t have anybody, no guidance,” Linderman said. “One of them was badly molested, and she was suicidal when she came as a young girl. Caring for an animal is a 24-hour-a-day job. It freed her from the thoughts that haunted her.”

Last year, Linderman sold the park and zoo to the eight women and two men, ranging in age from 38 to 24. The new owners disbanded the wildlife park but kept the zoo intact.

Working at the zoo means long, hard hours of feeding, bathing, brushing the animals and making sure they are not sick, hurt or suffering from stress.

“I call them my kids,” said Sherry Gavlik, 28, from New Hampshire, who joined the traveling zoo eight years ago after her mother saw an ad seeking volunteers to take care of animals. “I didn’t like the animals at first but just grew to love them. It released the anger I had built up inside, so I could communicate with people again.”

Gavlik, the daughter of a cabinetmaker and a painter, said she lived a secluded life before the zoo came along.

“I was inhibited. I didn’t like people. The experience [with the zoo] made me break out of my shell.”

For Tooley, too, being with the animals has been therapeutic.

Tooley said she was having problems and wanted to get away when she saw the same ad in 1989.

“I was hurt so much, I didn’t care anymore,” she said. “Animals don’t hurt you. The more I started working with animals, I started caring about kids and about everyone again.”

Tooley was among the women who bought the wildlife park and renamed it the Great American Petting Zoo.

Last year, it made 70 stops around the country at county and state fairs. In addition, a smaller number of animals travel to children’s hospitals. In Oregon, city children are brought to visit the 200 or so animals at the former wildlife park.

The women can recount numerous times when people’s faces showed outright delight.

Recently, Tooley broke into tears when she saw two young girls hug and kiss the animals at the Orange County Fair. The girls’ adoptive parents told her the girls had been abused at an orphanage in Russia.

“For a moment, their pasts didn’t exist anymore,” Tooley said. “They were having their own other world. I just stood there and watched.”