Animal Trainers Say Beasts No Burden

Getting approval to do anything on your property is complicated enough nowadays. But getting permission to raise rattlesnakes and alligators in a suburban area is a lot more complicated, and expensive, than knocking out a wall to add a sun room.

Just ask Jim and Gina Brockett, of Brockett’s Film Fauna, which for two decades has supplied everything from poisonous spiders and big reptiles to mounds of maggots for Hollywood.

“Someone’s gotta do it,” said Brockett, who has supplied snakes for Arnold Schwarzenegger and a big cat for Cartier jewelers. “The funny thing is [providing] maggots pays as much as [providing] rattlesnakes.”

For many years, Brockett’s company operated in the Pasadena area. But since moving to Carlisle Canyon in eastern Ventura County several years ago, the Brocketts have spent $8,000 in fees and much of their free time soliciting the support of neighbors, in hopes of keeping their menagerie of what the county calls “inherently dangerous” animals.

Today, their efforts will likely be rewarded when their application goes before the Ventura County Planning Commission. It has been recommended for approval by staff, no neighbors have complained, and several friends, neighbors and animal experts have offered support.

“It’s no easy process, and our neighbors have just been very supportive as far as what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” Jim Brockett said. “Most people up here appreciate the rural way of life. They like the idea that people take care of animals.”

In the meantime, the process has forced the Brocketts--private people who say they prefer to keep a low profile in order to avoid thrill-seeking trespassers and political animal rights activists--to put a full listing of their inventory into the public record.

That includes: a rhinoceros viper, cape vulture, auger buzzard, nutria, bobcats and a lynx, more than 20 alligators, snapping turtles, Gila monsters, as many as 75 snakes, including seven cobras and more than a dozen rattlesnakes, and countless spiders and bugs.

The couple are acquiring other animals--an ocelot, assorted toads and several varieties of eagles and falcons.Most of the Brocketts’ animals don’t require a special permit, but about one-fourth do because they are considered dangerous, either by state or county standards.

Because the Brocketts have been in the business so long, they are familiar with state and federal laws governing the keeping of such animals.But when they purchased their current home in 1994, they were not as familiar with Ventura County laws.

One reason they chose to relocate is that two other companies that train animal actors are located in the same area.

One of those companies has been in business since the late 1960s, Brockett said. While the canyon is near sprawling suburban developments, its immediate surroundings are mostly open space and it is bordered on one side by the Santa Monica Mountains. The Brocketts reside off a private road, further buffering their animals from the outside world, and vice versa.

It was during a conversation with one of the neighbors that the Brocketts realized they needed a special county permit, they said.

While the Brocketts declined to allow photographs of their property, the case planner for the county noted in his report that all the animal cages on site meet or exceed state and federal standards, and several neighbors attest in letters to the planning division that the couple keep their animals clean and treat them well.

One of the Brocketts’ cats starred in a commercial alongside a woman wearing $2 million in diamonds, Jim Brockett said.

Other animals were featured in the 1994 film “Maverick” starring Mel Gibson, and in Schwarzenegger’s 1996 action film “Eraser.”

Brockett provided the ants and trained several other animals for supporting roles in “Jerry Maguire.”

Schwarzenegger’s upcoming thriller “End of Days” features several of the Brocketts’ rattlers and mounds of their maggots.

Maggots?

“As disgusting as maggots are, they won’t kill you,” Brockett said. “But people respect you more when you walk in with a rattlesnake.”