Former Exotic Pets Enjoy Life in New Sanctuary

In his youth, Hamms starred in two beer commercials. Now, after some problems in his private life, he spends his days sleeping in the sun and walking the rocks with his roommate.

Hamms, a black bear, is one of about 30 rescued animals making their home at the Detroit Zoo, which regularly takes in--and keeps--exotic and unusual pets that were abandoned or confiscated.

It’s expected to be the new home for Cookie, a diana monkey that had been living with a family in New York since 1995. Cookie is a member of an endangered species that is illegal to keep as a pet under federal law.

Many zoos will take in animals like Hamms and Cookie and try to find them homes at sanctuaries or other zoos. But it’s hard for them to keep such animals permanently, said Jane Ballentine of the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn.

Limited space and a focus on educating the public and preserving species make it difficult for zoos to spend time and resources on caring for and rehabilitating an animal with an uncertain background, Ballentine said.

Other considerations include money, diseases an animal might have, where it came from and the safety of it and the zoo animals.

“The Detroit Zoo is very unique in that they’ve made it part of their mission . . . to bring these animals in,” she said.

Detroit Zoo officials decided to focus on animal welfare as well as conservation, said zoo director Ron Kagan. Those two goals often are at odds, but the zoo believes that conservation also means saving animals, he said.

The zoo cannot always rescue animals when asked--hundreds of people contact it each year--and most of the animals it does rescue are placed elsewhere. But officials do what they can, going so far as to build a special enclosure for a retired racehorse named Siberian Sun and teaching a river otter named Benson how to swim.

“Animals like this almost never can be woven into a conservation program,” Kagan said. “Sometimes animals clearly have been neglected. . . . They come in missing things,” like teeth or claws.

Katie the lion has been at the Detroit Zoo since 1993, when she was taken from an alleged crack house in Detroit. Tubby the lemur lives there too, confiscated from an Iowa home after officials discovered that other primates in the home had died from neglect. And there’s Lucky, a tiger found in the back-seat of his owner’s car when the man was stopped by police.

“Every day it’s been more bizarre,” Kagan said.

Whenever Cookie, the New York monkey, arrives in Detroit, she will live with mandrill monkeys once she’s ready to be integrated with other primates, he said.

The monkey’s owners, Roman and Inna Flikshtein, have been fighting to keep her. They claim she was obtained legally from a pet store and neither they nor pet store owner Dennis Borghese would have entered into an agreement had they known she was endangered.

Jennifer Post, a spokeswoman for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, said the state is waiting for the family to turn Cookie over to the proper authorities.

Rescued and confiscated animals like Cookie often are born in captivity and are either physically impaired, by being declawed, or psychologically impaired because they haven’t learned how they are supposed to act, said Craig Brestrup of the Association of Sanctuaries, a national group regulating 34 sanctuaries, including the Detroit Zoo.

Once animals come to Detroit, they have to be quarantined and monitored before they are placed with other animals. Hamms had never been with other bears and needed help learning typical bear behaviors such as foraging for food. But Kagan said the zoo has never failed to integrate an animal.

Federal law regulates endangered and threatened animals. It is generally illegal to keep such animals as pets.

Hamms was a pitchman for beer before he was sold to a private owner in Iowa, where he lived legally for nearly 20 years. After he bit his owner and was threatened with being euthanized, an animal rights group asked the zoo to take Hamms.

Many experts say pushing individual states to adopt regulations against keeping nondomesticated animals like Hamms as pets would lessen the number of animals that need new homes.

“I would like to see private ownership of wild animals absolutely abolished,” Brestrup said. “There’s just no reason for it. We have dogs and cats for companion animals.”

The Michigan Legislature passed two bills in June, one to regulate wolf-dog crosses, the other to regulate large carnivores, including large cats and bears. The bills regulate ownership, possession and care of the animals.

But people like the Flikshteins, the Brooklyn couple who paid $4,500 for Cookie, feel their pet is one of the family. The 6-year-old primate has a cage in the living room, watches television and bathes with water and lemon, the family said.

Experts say getting an exotic animal for a pet is not difficult.

“If you want a mountain lion for a pet, they are all over the place,” Brestrup said. “It is the easiest thing in the world.”

Often, Ballentine said, people will see the baby animals and think they’re cute--until the animal grows sharp claws and teeth.

“And then the novelty wears off,” she said.

On the Net:

https://www.detroitzoo.org

American Zoo and Aquarium Assn.: https://www.aza.org