Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles Read Online Free PDF Page B

parrot and hand-painted sign mark the Outpost’s en-
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    trance across from a preserve of south Florida pinelands. Nearly two
    hundred animals, mostly caged reptiles, live amid the trees, palms, and
    landscaped foliage.
    Bob Freer and his wife, Barbara Tansey, also live onsite. Bob is a
    licensed trapper, which in south Florida means he’s the guy you call
    to fish an alligator out of your pool or remove a 26-foot-python from
    underneath your house. He also wrestles alligators just up the road at
    the Everglades Reptile Farm. He got his first one at five when his dad
    stopped to get gas at a Tampa station that was giving away the baby
    reptiles with every fill-up. He’s been caring for wild animals in one way
    or another ever since.
    Bob and Barbara opened Everglades Outpost back in 1994 primarily
    as a rehab for Florida’s native critters, nursing them back to health and
    then returning them to the wild. Not long after opening, the Outpost
    started getting requests to take in exotic pets. Like Ron Gard, Bob just
    couldn’t say no.
    An outgoing, burly man with a graying mustache and jazz chop,
    Bob’s uniform is a safari hat and a T-shirt with cut-out sleeves. He’s
    gearing up to hunt pythons in the Everglades and graciously passes me
    off to a longtime committed volunteer. Like most Florida exotic ani-
    mal sanctuaries, the Everglades Outpost relies heavily on volunteers
    to help care for its wild residents. Terine is a fixture there. She enthu-
    proof
    siastically welcomes the chance to show off her exotic friends.
    Terine is a petite, wiry Latina with a black mullet that hugs her head
    like a helmet—bangs and sideburns in front and longer curls dusting
    the collar in back. She’s dressed in hiking boots, cargo shorts, and a T-
    shirt with a dreamy image of a mountain lion. A pendant of a gold lion’s
    head hangs from her neck, and a tiger and a leopard are tattooed on her
    legs, all the markings of a big-cat person, a Fla-zoon felidae.
    “These animals aren’t pets,” Terine says as we start down the shaded
    trail between the tall fenced pens of various pets—hyenas, owls, par-
    sno
    rots, donkeys, miniature horses, and various monkeys. “People tried to
    oz-
    make them pets, but they are wild animals! People get them when they
    alF
    were cute and little, but when they get bigger and start to bite, they
    F
    want to get rid of them.”
    o e
    She points to the caged ring-tailed lemur that is foaming at the
    ire
    mouth. “His owner had his teeth removed because she said he was bit-
    gan
    ing too much. That’s what they do! They bite! Especially when they are
    eM
    teething,” Terine says. “Look at him. Now he has to gum his food.” She
    3
    sighs.
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    Terine says one overwhelmed monkey owner called demanding that
    the Outpost take her pet, complaining it was biting and being gener-
    ally unruly. Before Terine could get the OK from Bob, the owner left the
    monkey in the Outpost parking lot, and scrammed without even telling
    the refuge it was there. “She had the nerve to call us back a few weeks
    later and ask if we had trained it yet.”
    A shed snakeskin hangs on a hibiscus bush outside the reptile house.
    The sign over the door says, “Snakes of the World.” Inside, the walls
    are lined with glass enclosures filled with about every snake known to
    man, including some of the deadliest—rattlers, anacondas, mambas,
    and king cobras. Refuge herpetologist Albert Killian is uncharacteris-
    tically absent. He does the snake shows and is a legend in the herper
    world; he’s been bitten by poisonous snakes so many times that the
    county venom response unit calls him a “frequent flier.” Terine says
    this is only a small portion of his collection; he has more than three
    thousand snakes. The screws on the terrariums seem perilously loose.
    Our time inside is short.
    Each animal at the Outpost has a unique Florida story. Buc, a grizzly
    bear, was confiscated from a backyard in Miami Beach. A cougar