Stalking terror, one porcupine at a time

I’M SOFT ON TERRORISM. Which is weird because I don’t even like roller coasters or scary movies or people who enter a room without announcing themselves first. I should be tough on mild alarmism.

It’s just that I figure that my worrying time is better spent on things likely to destroy me, such as drivers on cellphones, transfats and getting kissed by President Bush. But my softness firmed up last week. That’s when I realized that terrorism can happen anywhere. A list from the Homeland Security Department that determines hundreds of millions of dollars in anti-terrorism grants showed that Indiana and Wisconsin each have more than twice as many terror targets as California -- and that one target is a petting zoo in Alabama.

My immediate thought was: Of course, a petting zoo. This is the kind of “think like a terrorist” strategy we need. Petting zoos are not only where our children are, it’s where our animal children are. And if children are our future, then animal children are our animal future. Al Qaeda takes out our petting zoos, and our civilization is reduced to nothing but useless old creatures.

Now that people know that Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo in Woodville, Ala., is in the cross hairs, I figured it would be emptied out. Sherry Lewis, who owns the zoo, has been busy trying to get people to risk their lives to pet her particularly vulnerable “non-spitting llama,” but people are wary.

“I’ve had three or four calls asking if it’s safe to come and wanting to know when we got the bomb threat,” Lewis said. “One lady in the post office thought my name was found on a list that a terrorist made up. I said, ‘No, it’s our own state government saying we’re a terrorist site.’ ”

Lewis thinks that Old MacDonald’s was entered in the database when the feds asked the state to come up with places where large gatherings occur. Then the state asked the county, which asked Woodville. “I live in a town of 800, so when I have 50 people in my zoo, that’s a large gathering of people,” she explained. Then the list was compiled and given to the state, which, in a race against the terrorists, didn’t have time to review the list before rushing to ask the government for money.

Even armed with foreknowledge this week, Lewis has done nothing to secure her 6 1/2 acres of zoo, which includes a porcupine named Quillie Nelson and, until recently, a pig named Porkahontas. She assured me that Porkahontas did not die a victim of terrorism, but I was unconvinced that Lewis had the training to determine that.

If you think this is scary only for Lewis, wait until you hear this: Los Angeles also has petting zoos.

I demanded to know what City Council President Eric Garcetti was doing about this. “We are hoping to add fur to all the containers at the port,” he said. “We will charge children for the privilege of petting the containers whenever new ships come to the harbor. This should ensure that we get our fair share of homeland security dollars here in Los Angeles.”

Although that sounded like a good long-term plan, I needed immediate action. So I called Underwood Family Farms, which has petting zoos in Moorpark and Somis. Manager Russell Blades said that terrorist threats were not at the top of his list of worries. “It’s not on the bottom of my worries,” he said. “If you start worrying about stuff like that, then terrorism has won.”

That’s crazy talk. Terrorists have won when they blow up a petting zoo.

Trying to calm down, I tried to convince myself that Old MacDonald’s made the list because Alabama petting zoos are somehow more vulnerable than L.A. petting zoos. That’s when I realized that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which hates zoos, is headquartered in Virginia. And for all I knew, Virginia could be near Alabama.

Lisa Lange, head of the Los Angeles PETA office, said that although petting zoos are “cruel little exhibits potentially bubbling with contagious diseases harmful to kids,” the organization doesn’t advocate dirty bombing them. Though she seemed OK with kids getting Zidaned in the chest by goats.

So, the sad news is that all our petting zoos are vulnerable. Worse yet, instead of taking this threat seriously, the media is treating it like a joke. And that, in the end, is the real threat -- our self-inflicted mockery. We can’t afford to let our war on terror disintegrate because of our rationality -- a weakness our enemy doesn’t have.

Fighting a metaphysical war like a real war is inherently irrational. So we might as well fully commit and fret about the security of our midsize gatherings of farm animals. The only thing we have to fear, after all, is a lack of fear itself.