Bucking the System
Five exotic deer have found a comfortable and secure home on a ranch in the Ojai Valley after spending an uncertain six months in a bureaucratic limbo that nearly led to a premature death.
Oak View animal lover Diana Frieling now owns the small herd of fallow deer after waging a successful campaign to find a loophole in stringent state regulations that threatened to turn the animals into venison.
Frieling moved the deer last week to her Windswept Ranch. They now live in a specially built enclosure that is four times the size of their previous home in a small muddy pen at Santa Paula’s historic Faulkner Farm.
Now a striking white stag named Oscar, his two Bambi-like fawns, dubbed Frosty and Suzy, Daphne the doe and another as-yet-unnamed female deer have settled into their 6,400-square-foot hillside compound that comes complete with massive oak trees for shade and expansive valley views.
“I’m kinda waiting to see if [the state] is going to send me some other paperwork to do,” said a somewhat dazed but happy Frieling. “I’m not sure we’re done yet. . . . It’s taken so long, it feels like we’ve been doing it most of our lives.”
But now the deer are safe and soon will be protected from coyotes by an 8-foot-high fence that Frieling’s husband, David, plans to electrify to dissuade predators.
Rabbits hop through the underbrush. Red-tailed hawks soar above the hillside. And Diana Frieling already has Oscar literally eating out of her hand.
“It’s what we’ve been trying to do for the deer since we got them,” said Larry Yee, a board member of the Ventura-based Hansen Trust, a nonprofit group administered by the University of California that purchased Faulkner Farm last year.
“Unfortunately, we had to wade through some bureaucracy and some red tape, but I guess it was all worth it and the deer now have a wonderful place to stay,” he added. “They probably think that St. Peter’s trailer came down and brought them to heaven. And they did it without seeing the white light.”
Slaughter was a real possibility for the deer before Frieling stepped in.
Hansen Trust officials wanted the deer removed from the farm, saying they were incompatible with their goal of designing an educational facility devoted, in part, to teaching schoolchildren about Ventura County agriculture.
Enter Frieling, who learned of the animals’ impending eviction and was only too happy to become guardian of the unwanted deer. She already keeps a menagerie of animals, some of which she has rescued over the years.
“She does what she wants to do,” her husband said with a shrug. “After five horses and four dogs and four cats and two pigs and geese, what are you going to do?”
But new and complex state regulations designed to prevent the spread of disease mandated that the exotic deer must be killed before leaving Faulkner Farm. Indeed, it turned out that the trust didn’t technically own the deer since the state permit originally granted Faulkner Farm prohibited selling live deer to new owners.
So began Frieling’s paperwork odyssey to give the deer a permanent home.
Frieling said she spent about $1,000 to build the large enclosure that the state Department of Fish and Game required. She stoically awaited the correct permit applications--the department sent the wrong form twice--including one pertaining to desert tortoises.
Yet officials hesitated, insisting that she do things by the book, while also conceding that their own regulations, which took effect in December 1994, were “difficult to understand.”
After a story about a frustrated Frieling appeared in The Times and she asked state Sen. Jack O’Connell’s office to intervene, things started to happen. Within a matter of weeks, she received word that the state panel entrusted to deal with such matters would likely grant her dispensation to adopt the animals, which one deer expert referred to as “The Santa Paula 5.”
On March 6, that is exactly what happened. But Frieling hadn’t quite reached the end of the paper trail.
State officials belatedly told her that she would need to apply for a different type of permit before she could actually take possession of the herd. And that permit required an inspection of the pen by a veterinarian. That done, Frieling and friends attempted to move the animals to the Ojai Valley.
But the animals, easily stressed by a daytime move, didn’t cooperate and an equally stressed Frieling temporarily abandoned the effort. Which is just as well, because Frieling received yet another call from Fish and Game officials--this time telling her that she needed a special moving permit to transport the animals.
After a final flurry of faxes, the deer were finally relocated last week with the aid of an experienced horse-moving service--Oscar and the kids first, then the two ladies.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” Frieling said as she scratched Oscar under the chin. “I’m so happy that they’re here, and I want to share them with people too.”
Frieling plans to invite 4-H groups, Scout troops and civic organizations to see the herd. Frosty will be gelded in the coming weeks to ensure that tiny Oak View’s fallow deer population doesn’t increase. Oscar already had the procedure.
Next month, Frieling is planning to hold a barbecue--beef, not venison, is on the menu--to acknowledge people who helped rescue the deer in an Oscar celebration of her own. In her eyes, the post-event party marks the end of a bureaucratic saga worthy of a Hollywood epic.
“It never ends,” Frieling said, adding that she plans to send flowers to Fish and Game. “I basically appreciate they kept their sense of humor and dealt with me. . . . It’s a good thing for people to know if they really want to do something or they think it’s right, that it is possible.
“It’s not easy, but it is possible.”
