A Haven for All Creatures Wild and Unwanted

Mollie Hogan has the animal-lover’s ideal landlady.

“How would you feel about my bringing a mountain lion home?” Hogan asked her, and the woman said she thought that would be fine.

The mountain lion has been joined by two more, as well as two foxes, a wolf, a bobcat, a serval, three kinkajous, two opossums, a red-tailed hawk and other creatures Hogan describes as “nonreleasable wild animals.”

They live alongside Hogan in Topanga Canyon at the Nature of Wildworks, a nonprofit refuge that takes in problematical animals that might otherwise be put down.

Founded in 1996, the wildlife care center is having a fund-raiser Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. at the canyon’s Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. The program will feature singer John Raitt, 83, who originated the role of Billy Bigelow in Broadway’s “Carousel” in 1945--four years before now-famous daughter Bonnie Raitt was born.

The program will also include music by Hogan and others, magic, storytelling and a wildlife art show. And, of course, there will be animal programs, including appearances by Envy, one of the center’s mountain lions, and Moon, its resident wolf.

Many of the 25 inhabitants of the Nature of Wildworks once appeared in zoo shows that have been phased out, including a number of animals that Hogan bought from the L.A. Zoo. She was a keeper there for 13 years, much of which she spent tending North American mammals, including coyotes, bobcats and wolverines.

Although the 47-year-old Hogan is passionate about all kinds of wildlife, she has a special attachment to cats, which explains why she had the handsome head of a mountain lion tattooed on her ankle. Her fondness for largish cats has survived such tests as having Phoenix, one of the center’s mountain lions, knock her down, scratch her rather badly and break her glasses. But she prudently draws the line at taking on really big cats: “I’m here by myself, so I don’t think it’s smart to have a tiger.”

Filling a Need

Hogan says a major reason that centers such as hers are needed is because so many people try to turn wild animals into pets. In California, it’s illegal to sell a mountain lion as a pet or to keep one. But people can get such animals from states such as Texas and Nevada, which permit their sale. And, unfortunately, some Californians do.

“Usually, the only way people get caught is their neighbors report them or the animals get out,” she says.

One such exotic escapee is the center’s serval, a wildcat native to Africa that was found wandering in Woodland Hills.

Often people who try to keep bobcats and other wild animals at home get them when they are young and as adorable as kittens. A year later the owners may regret they ever brought the animals home.

“They’re cute when they’re little,” Hogan says. “But they’re not cute when they get big. They grow up to be wild animals.”

The temperaments of the animals in her care vary, often depending on whether they were raised by humans. The center has a beautiful 19-year-old barn owl named Ty that allows Hogan to pet it as if it were a puppy. The bird was raised in the nursery at the L.A. Zoo.

But Hogan also tends three aggressive young barn owls that fuss whenever she approaches them. They ended up at the refuge after they were discovered in a bale of hay delivered to a feed store. The mother owl had built her nest in the hay, and the bale was subsequently tossed into the back of a truck. Unaware of the stowaways, the truck driver took off, with the three owlets still in the nest, leaving the mother somewhere behind.

The young barn owls scream at night. So does the center’s silver red fox, which sounds, Hogan says, “exactly like a woman in distress.”

Hogan would like to find another Topanga Canyon site for her menagerie. While her landlady has no objections, some of her neighbors have complained about the traffic generated by the 40 or so volunteers who help her with the demanding job of keeping aging wild animals healthy.

One of Hogan’s strategies for engaging the three mountain lions and keeping them active is to make sure they have a steady supply of phone books. “They love to rip them up,” she explains.

The cats also like to play with soccer-sized balls.

“They don’t ever get bored with them. At dawn they bat them around.”

A Labor of Love

Although Hogan works hard to keep cages clean and the animals watered, fed and nurtured, she obviously loves what she does. There is something almost Edenic about the modest facility, which assumes responsibility for each animal for its natural lifetime. No lion lies down with a lamb at the Nature of Wildworks, but wolf Moon does play, apparently contentedly, with Hogan’s two dogs, Hopi and Prairie.

Local supporters of the wildlife refuge help out by giving Hogan any deer they hit and kill on winding canyon roads to add interest to the animals’ diet.

Indeed, she says, she always brakes for such choice road kill as squirrels and quail and encourages her volunteers to do so as well.

Tickets for Saturday’s event cost $8. All proceeds will go to the Nature of Wildworks and its splendid creatures.

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Spotlight runs every Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.