"Hello?" "This him." "Actually, I'm trying to find a home for 10 to 12 tigers." "They're drop dead gorgeous, you know, not aggressive." "Captive-bred, captive-born." "No, no, ask me anything if you're interested in giving them a good home." "Well, I've had a big time permit with the usda and I had a falling out with them and they suspended my permit and I'm having to downscale on these animals right now." "By Monday." "I'm taking offers as they come and the best place for 'em between all those offers is where they will go." "Haven't been far from here at all." "I grew up here as a kid, grew up on a farm, raised animals on the farm, been around animals all my life." "Living as a tiger myself, alienating myself back here and just living with these guys, you know, you really get to know them, heart, soul, and breath, you know." "Come here, buddy." "I mean, you just got a relationship with 'em." "I know what they're thinking and they know what I'm thinking and it's a mutual respect." "That's some big old paws." "A Minnesota woman is dead tonight after she was attacked by one of her own tigers." "Friends say 52-year-old Cindy gamble lived for her 3 tigers." "A veterinarian had to euthanize the tiger so investigators could get to gamble." "There has now been a fatal tiger attack in the San Francisco zoo." "An uncle's pet tiger attacked the 3-year-old." "Doctors say quick action by relatives saves his arm and his life." "An incident occurred onstage in which Roy sustained a serious injury from one of the tigers." "There couldn't be anybody who was a better animal handler than Roy horn, and yet, he did the wrong thing at one time, one night, and it almost cost him his life." "Flat rock." "Well, that's not a big population center, but there's a few people there." "In a worst case scenario, a tornado, which we're in tornado alley, a tornado comes through and rips those cages down and those tigers are loose." "A tiger can run 15 miles an hour." "No problem." "A tiger can be in flat rock in 4 minutes." "It's scary." "I'm talking about something that could happen." "Never once has anything ever happened here." "No tigers have ever been out." "No one has ever been hurt." "No one, not a scratch." "Not a scratch." "So you made it there and back, no problems." "As usual." "Once a week we buy anywhere from 1200 to 2000 pounds of Turkey, usually at 10 cents a pound, and it's nice chunks and strips of just Turkey breast." "We also feed the roadkill, deer, you know, squirrels, things like that." "People that own and possess tigers, big cats," "I've seen anecdotal information that suggests that it may be 10-15,000 or more in possession in the United States." "When we talk about people possessing big cats we're talking about animal dealers, animal breeders, brokers, circuses, zoological parks, roadside zoos, down to a mom and pop that have a tiger in a chain link fence." "It all started when Michelle Ashton was spotted over the weekend exchanging cat cages at a mcallen mervyn's parking lot." "An astute officer moves in and notices these are no ordinary kitties." "They are endangered bengal tiger cubs, possibly headed to Mexico." "Smuggling wildlife is a lucrative business across the country that ranks second only to drug smuggling." "There is no control over the breeding." "They're being sold to just about anybody." "If we don't control it now, we will have to do mass euthanasia, and that means putting a lot of animals to sleep just as we do with the cats and dogs now." "It will get just as bad." "There is no humane reason I can think of." "There's no life-saving reason, no rescue reason, no altruistic reason for bringing these animals into your home." "Just selfish reasons." "5 starved tigers and a lion are recovering in a pinellas county wildlife shelter tonight." "Yesterday, state officials rescued the malnourished cats from a property in pinellas county." "Rescuers say the 4 rare white tigers, orange tiger, and lioness were dangerously close to dead, about 200 pounds underweight, they say." "People do tend to get in a bind." "Even I've been there, too, you know, getting in a bind, but I always managed to make sure my cats were always fed always." "I've raised tigers for 20 years." "Got my first tiger, I believe, in 1992." "I gave probably 4500 for it, and actually, from there, I had to have another one, and before too long, it was probably 1994," "I probably had my first litter of tigers." "I would say in 20 years time" "I have probably sold under a hundred." "Rachel, come here." "What?" "You want yours, too, don't ya?" "Here, baby." "Zanny cat." "Zanny cat." "Will she come out for that?" "She's not home." "She's spooked a little bit." "Some of these tigers we have sold anywhere from $1000, only because the were going to a really, really, really good home, private zoo, whatever." "And on the high end, you know, we've sold some tigers for 14-15,000, and still going to a really, really good home." "Let me out." "Here, vixi cat." "There we go." "It's not a good idea to rub a cat's back while it's got its food, but if you can do it, do it." "You get an operation going and you need to sell kittens to support the rest of the tigers, whatever you're doing, and thing is, with all this jurisdiction and screwing the lid tight down on ownership," "the sales of animals are stopping, and, you know, people are depending on it, you know, to take care of their animals, to be self-sufficient, and that has all pretty much slowed down or even stopped." "When you don't have the means or the money to take care of your cats, ultimately, the choice is they're going to have to sell the cats to recoup some money." "In the worse-case scenarios, some of them will kill the cats or they give the cats away to someone else, and usually whoever they give it to or they sell it to the cycle continues because they end up having" "cats that breed and have babies and they have to find homes for them." "I mean, there is no room at the inn for tigers and for lions and leopards and those sort of cats because the places are all filled with them and nobody really wants them." "You're at the exotic feline rescue center in center point, Indiana." "We're a home to almost 200 big cats." "We have 99 tigers, about 40 African lions, a lot of leopards." "Cougars." "This lion came from Minnesota." "The family that bought him when he was cute and cuddly locked him in a kennel in a barn when he started getting big." "They couldn't feed..." "Couldn't or wouldn't feed him, so their next door neighbor started feeding him." "Then the owners told the neighbors that they had to get rid of him immediately or they were going to shoot him." "So the neighbors borrowed a horse trailer and brought him down here." "This is a leopard named Sinbad." "He came from a collection of cats in south Texas, where the previous owner had died." "His permanent cage was about the size of our transport cage, so he was in something way too small for him." "This tiger was bought as a cub at an auction, and then abandoned in a bar in Ohio." "The big male, that one, was found running loose in center new Mexico, escaped from an unlicensed owner." "This tiger killed his trainer in las Vegas." "These 2 cats, those 2 lions, all came from a place in Pennsylvania." "Guy had lost his federal permits and had a number of cats." "We were asked to go take one, and we got there, and we ended up taking 18 of them." "They were a year and a half old." "They had been locked in the man's basement." "They weighed between 50 and 90 pounds." "4 of the tigers were blind." "It was the most degusting thing that I have ever seen." "We probably turn away 50 cats for every one we take, so we don't like to breed here." "I hate to turn the cats away that we have to turn away, and if they're born here, then that means cats out there that we were asked to take, we can't." "None of these animals belong in cages." "They don't belong to be born into this world under these circumstances." "That's not what they were made for." "The problem is is the people that have them don't want to stop breeding them because they look on that as a livelihood." "And I say they look on it as a livelihood, because if they weren't doing this they could go out and get jobs like everybody else." "All right." "Marci cat, ready for your new house?" "This is Marci cat." "Actually this is the first cat that I ever bought." "She is spoiled." "Ain't ya?" "And I hand-raised her from 10 days old and she's 20 years old and doing wonderful." "Back in the middle 80s I'd had state permits for several cougars that I'd had, and I made a transition to a federal usda because I was going to raise some tigers and sell some tigers." "Usda was eager to come out and tell me regulations and help me with regulations, so I became usda-licensed very easily, and a lot of people did at that time." "In Indiana, if a person has a usda license to breed and sell or exhibit an exotic animal such as a large cat, they are exempt from needing a state permit." "I think the state of Indiana's laws are pretty strict." "I know we are stricter than the usda in a lot of ways and that's why a lot of people in Indiana get a federal license instead of a state license." "Through the years, the usda seemed to fall by the wayside and they were more eager to lie to you, speculate, and use their creative writing skills to, you know, assume things." "Usda and dnr people are like this now, because it takes that collaboration to get some of these people like myself, you know, tigerless." "We learned about Dennis hill through the U.S. department of agriculture, that they were having some problems at his facility and that they were in the process of suspending his license, and that's when we heard about the conditions of the facility" "and decided we needed to see what laws, if any," "Mr. Hill was breaking." "When we first went to Dennis hill's facility, there were 21 tigers, one cougar," "4 black bears, 6 leopards, and 2 ring-tailed lemurs." "This is cage number 2." "They knew from the usda that we've had problems every time we'd get some really, really good rains, and they came in and immediately, during the Katrina rains, and took all the terrible pictures." "And they used that to their benefit, you know, to try and make me look bad." "This is pen number 22 with one tiger." "Pen number 23, also with one tiger." "I was overwhelmed with the number of animals that he had and I was very disappointed with the fact that somebody could house beautiful creatures such as those in those conditions." "I did see cages where a roof was not properly braced, where it could be lifted up." "I saw padlocks that weren't secured and doors that weren't secured." "If a tiger really was motivated to get out." "4 months ago, I probably..." "I had 24 tigers, and the manageability factor really comes into play, because you fix something and it gets torn up before you get something else fixed in the next cage." "You know, it's a lot, a lot of work." "I don't think Mr. Hill's a bad guy." "I think probably, at some point in time, his facility was much better operated and in a much better state than it is today, but he's become overwhelmed taking care of these, so it's just a bad situation all around" "and one that, unfortunately, falls to the state of Indiana at that point in time to try to clean up." "The laws here allow the dnr to seize animals that are in violation of state law without a permit." "So we have authority to seize those animals, and that was the action with which we were given direction to take." "For 20 years, Dennis hill has raised tigers for circuses and magicians and Vegas stage acts." "But recently, times have been tough." "The money's run out, and the federal government yanked hill's permit, and then the state moved in." "I knew that they couldn't do this, and I immediately called my lawyer and we went to the judge and filed an emergency injunction." "We had one facility there first thing in the morning to take some animals, and they had about 6 or 7 animals loaded, at which time we were served with a restraining order and were made to stop taking any other animals." "I started unloading the cats that were loaded up, putting them back." "At that time they had tranquilized blizzi in a poor, shabby way, and she was loaded up in a horse trailer and had a very large cut on her head." "Later I found out that they nearly killed her, overdosed her, and through all the trauma and everything." "There was no way that blizzi was going out of here." "No way whatsoever, or they was gonna haul me in a paper bag with her." "They had to budge on blizzi." "I got her unloaded, and then I told the dnr," "I said, "if you do have some good owners, and I mean good owners,"" "I said, "I will place some of these tigers right here and now today."" "I said, "tell me their names, let me talk to them."" "So that day I let a total of 8 cats roll out of here." "I was very aggravated." "Once again the government's taking something from me." "And here they are trying to make a shambles out of me on TV, setting the stage." "You know, it's not right." "Shortly after the day of the seizure," "Dennis hill and the dnr reached an agreement that he would place at least 20 of the 23 animals that he had remaining within 30 days time." "At the end of that 30 days, he was only to have 3 animals left, and if he had approvable facilities at that time, we could then issue him permits for those 3 animals." "Less is more, too, you know." "You gotta look up rather than down." "I mean, if you're going anywhere, if you look up, you're going up." "If you look down, you're going down." "I've always tried to kind of take a bad situation and make a good situation every time." "That's just who I am." "He was an animal lover when he was a kid." "Every time we'd see an animal out," ""mama, stop and get it." "Stop and get it."" "Climbed way up into a tree to get a coon one time." "Got that thing down." "Got some owls down one time." "The skunk, I can't remember too much about that skunk, how he got it, but we had several skunks." "And I helped him get 'em." "I can't see him without animals because that's all he's known." "He'd always tell me that, "hey, I got a new lemur."" "Tiffany." "Say hello." "One was just never enough, you know?" "It was always he needed..." "He had a fetish to get more." "If he found there was a different breed or a different type out there, he wanted that one." "Patty, hey." "What's up?" "At one time I probably had 50...50 cats." "4 tigers." "Tony." "Probably 4 cougars." "Those are servals." "These are some Korean leopards." "There's a couple of our African leopards." "That's tc, he's a caracal lynx." "Tell 'em." "Siberian lynx." "There's Damien." "He's a black leopard." "He'll say something to us." "What kitty cat?" "Hoarding is oftentimes a misunderstood form of animal cruelty." "Loving that animal so much that you hoard them and with the feeling or the conviction that nobody loves this animal, or these animals, as much as you do." "You know, you see that on the news, too." "People, you know, have 75 house cats in a trailer and they love each and every one of them, and it also gets that way with exotic animals, too." "I mean, actually, in one small sense," "I could probably say I was that way because I was fascinated with each and every one of them and was reluctant to get rid of some of them at times, you know?" "I guess I'm a collector, you know." "Where does the compassion end and the collecting start?" "What are we doing, hmm?" "What are we doing?" "This is a kitten formula, kmr." "It's for kittens, but we use it for the tigers as well." "Come here, babies." "Come here, babies." "This is called scruffing." "It doesn't hurt 'em at all." "It's kind of what their moms do." "He tries up to probably, maybe 9 to 12 days, and then after that he takes them from the mom because it creates the stronger bond between you and that tiger when you bottle feed them, and that's why we take them." "These guys were taken about 8 days." "She has a fat belly." "That's what we want." "Yeah." "Hello?" "This is him." "Actually I'm trying to find a home for one or two black bears." "Mm-hmm." "I see." "I see." "Well, if you know of anyone, send them my direction." "Oh, yeah?" "Yeah, I know." "I've called everywhere across the U.S.." "I'm hoping to send 10 tigers and 2 leopards to a person in Wisconsin." "Every day I call him and harass him about getting down here very soon, because I'm really counting on all this, and if they don't, I'd probably..." "I will lose the ones I'm gonna keep." "Rachel." "Uh-huh." "It was a tough, tough decision to pick and choose." "31/2 years." "Orange, yes." "Tazzi, orange female. 10." "Realistically, on Monday" "I will have 3 cats here for the inspection." "I will have 6 cages that will be inspected." "If the 3 empty cages pass," "I can bring 3 tigers back the next day, and after 6 months we can have as many tigers as we have compliant cages and compliant facility." "What's that number come to?" "12?" "Ok, I believe that's it." "I think that anybody in this country that wants a tiger should be able to have a tiger, if they can provide that tiger with adequate food, adequate housing, adequate staff, then I think it's fine." "Now, of the people in this country that have tigers," "I don't see that happening hardly at all." "Somebody had made a complaint about a tiger being in an apartment." "I arrived on scene and I went upstairs." "The door was a little open, there were no lights on, there was nobody in the apartment." "Knocking, making noise, and you don't know what's behind the door." "If there is a tiger there somewhere, is he 10 feet behind the door?" "Is he around the corner?" "Nobody knows at this point." "So the police department went into another apartment that was on the floor below, and they were able to place a camera with a telescopic lens through that apartment so they could go up and see what was going on in there." "We were all quite shocked by what we saw in the scope." "It was not going to be just a simple matter of walking in and throwing a chain leash on him and just walking him out." "So, best situation was to have the animal tranquilized." "So the officer rappelled from the top of the building and he shot through the window." "We've got such a mentality now that it's ok to keep animals in a cage." "I mean, these are animals that roam naturally." "They go hundreds of thousands of miles." "What gives us the right to take an animal and put it in a prison cell for the rest of its life for our enjoyment?" "If you're going to keep one of these animals, it needs to have 1500, 2000 square feet." "And 1500 or 2000 square feet is not what I think is an adequate cage." "I think that is a basis to start regulation." "This cage is probably 12,000 square feet." "If I had to guess I would say Dennis hill's cages are somewhere around 600 square feet." "A rule of thumb about the size of a tiger cage, if it's big enough to maintain vegetation, you're getting there." "If it's not big enough to keep a cat in it and have grass in it, then you're way too small." "They have all been spayed and neutered and they all get along really well together." "Tigers are not social in the wild, but when they're raised and born in captivity, they are made to have a need for contact with humans." "We want to replace that contact with humans with another animal of its own kind, and the best way to do it is with its own species." "All tigers like to swim." "So we provide water for all of our tigers to get into." "They got muddy water now." "You know, I'd build every one of them a pool if I had the money." "She's peeing in her water." "Sometimes they like to do that." "Rain kitty." "Rain, quit that." "Some tigers are what I call problem tigers and they just tear up things and do all sorts of things and some are just totally easy keepers." "No maintenance to them hardly at all." "When the news teams came out here they made it sound like it was so dirty and terrible out here and he didn't take good care of them or anything, but he takes great care of them." "He's always out here doing stuff for them and he loves them so much." "Tazzi, you're all right." "Just treats them like they're his kids, you know?" "He'd rather starve than see them starve." "Good guy." "It's his life, and I can't imagine..." "To me it would be inhumane to take those tigers from him." "I don't know how they would survive." "If them people would stay off of him and let him raise his animals," "I says animals are not hungry, but anything, an animal outdoors, they're bound to get wet when it rains." "There's snow on them, I mean, that's the way they live." "But some of these people think that because you got 'em in a cage they have to be clean, and it's hard to be clean when they're out in an open place like that." "The one thing I can always count on is mom." "Always." "Unconditionally." "Yeah, our family's all close." "We help each other." "Gravel here to walk on, huh?" "Yeah." "I know a few times he didn't have too much over there even to eat, and I'd say, "let's go to the store."" ""Well, mom, my telephone's going to be shut off."" ""Well, here's my check." You know?" "I'd give him my last penny if..." "She always does." "She's given me many last pennies." "But I'm hoping that he's gonna get this place straightened up." "I've been here about 3 weeks." "It's my wife's idea." "She knew Dennis all her life." "And her mom passed away recently and she wanted to do something in the name of her ma and you know, that was good cause, and she picked this one and I started on it and I ain't stopped yet." "My wife and her sisters and her brothers, they all grew up with Dennis, and they needed a carpenter." "I'm gonna stay with him till he gets it done because I think he's got a deadline to get this stuff done and I told him I'd stay with him and..." "I'm his neighbor." "I'm sure if I asked him to do something for me he would do the same thing." "I build and design houses." "I can do many, many things and, one way or another, I will make it right with him." "I still work occasionally, doing some construction." "We both bring in money, but I probably bring in a little bit more." "It's fine." "I don't mind." "I always have a plan and a vision about our financial situation, so we will never starve, at least." "Tired of being broke for too long, you know?" "I had the golden touch back in the day." "I mean, I could sell ice cubes to eskimos." "I mean major money." "Back in '92, I was doing earth-moving work." "I had some equipment." "Caterpillar track excavators, backhoes, bulldozers, dump trucks, all of it." "There was another girl in the picture at that time." "I was married to one girl for a good while and, you know..." "She was real into animals, too." "And apache's pissing all over me." "Damn it." "You're gonna get me something right now." "I was making good money at the time." "Major contract with Detroit steel." "Think I had 8 harleys." "The Porsche I bought in late '93, 94, and had the yacht, too." "Regal commodore 400." "I think I had 6 jet skis." "Life was pretty good." "I was headed to the outer limits." "No mentally, but, you know, financially." "And then the carpet just got pulled out from under me and I went through things" "I never went through in my life before, you know." "Through the big contract leaving, going to Mexico, and got a divorce." "The divorce stems from the money problems." "I went through a lot of pain and suffering." "Actually wasn't hurting no one but myself." "I actually was smoking meth and riding motorcycles like a wild man and playing guitar 24 hours a day." "But meth, I mean, I was hoping it would kill me but it didn't." "I ended up getting picked up by the feds." "I was riding with a notorious motorcycle gang." "You know, they're always after motorcyclists, especially motorcycle gangs." "And about 100 feds came, atf, the FBI, the DEA," "I don't know where the CIA was but all the agencies were here." "They didn't find very much, and, long story short, I did like 6 months' house arrest and a couple years probation." "And then after I got arrested, that was the perfect reason to quit." "Because I was too scared." "I wasn't going to jail." "You know, I was done with it." "Tigers, what we doing?" "Boo boo." "Boo boo boy." "Found boo boo a really nice home in north Indiana." "Here comes our guy now." "They are amish people." "They have a place called maple Lane wildlife and they have like 250 species of animals there.," " hello?" " Laverne loder." "Dennis hill, glad to meet you." "Glad to meet you, Laverne." "Bears are just really, really, really hard to try to find a home for." "Can't grab ahold, ander?" "People are just..." "They fear them." "I can read people pretty good over the phone or in person, and he sounded like a pretty good candidate and even given standing here right now if I didn't think he wasn't, well, I'd have to send him on down the road bearless." "I figure after we get moving he'll probably lay down." "Probably relax." "Most animals do." "He'll go to his corner and stay, you know." "Right." "Cool, thank you, Dennis." "Thank you, Laverne, for saving boo boo." "Ok, I'll try to give him a good home." "I know you will." "Se ya." "I hate to say this, and constance accuses me of it, but I guess I am prejudiced to the white tigers, because they were so, so sought after." "I mean all tigers, they're all beautifully majestic, the lord of the jungle, but the thing is, the white tigers with the beautiful blue eyes, it's just, I haven't gotten past it yet." "I manufactured gene pools and bloodlines to produce these white cats." "I made it so an orange cat would have more white babies than orange babies." "Thor dog and Dixie, both being orange cats, was the first 2 kittens that I hand-raised that started producing the white cats." "And isis, her mother was that cat right there, that tiger right there, that solid white." "The white babies, they're the big sellers to the famous people with the money." "You know, the plan was to sell a few white cats and support all the tigers." "You know, that solid white tiger up there, you know, you're talking 75 to $150,000 for one of those tigers." "And that would go a long ways." "It's deeper than me and tigers, tom." "It's about freedom." "It's about freedom." "I understand that." "I love them little guys." "I was down here when one of his first tigers was born and he was a lot littler than that and I picked him up and he just grunted and carried on and it's the one that..." "Aw, what's the matter?" "Yes." "Dag-gone." "Yes." "No, you're not gonna run away." " And when Marci was a baby..." " Right, and I still have her." "Yeah, that's what I hear." "And, uh..." "It's neat to have him around." "It's neat." "But I think he's gonna have to do something about his house or it's gonna fall in on him." "Dude, I'm too broke, tom." "Between all these feds and these state people that want to kill me or shoot me and take..." "You know, they done took all my guns and all that stuff." "You know, they sent my job to Mexico, like the government does, they want to keep the people poor." "It's a corporate government anymore." "It's a corporate government, sure as hell is." "I have found that everyone is against state officials, government officials." "They're tired of the way that the government is treating us all." "I mean, the war's right here in the U.S.A.." "The war's right here in this house, and every house." "Because it is a freedom, and more and more every day we lose more freedoms." "We have approximately 600 animals ranging from domestic animals all the way up to primates to big cats, to birds, and other animals." "Our operating budget right now is just above 600,000 a year." "People are going out and buying these animals, keeping them for a few years, disposing of them." "There is nobody doing anything right now to stop this problem." "The laws aren't strong enough, the laws aren't being enforced, and it's just a simple matter of somebody has to put their foot down and say, "no."" "But nobody wants to do that, because they're so afraid the public are gonna cry," ""it's our right." "It's our freedom."" "That's fine." "But there are certain things that you shouldn't be allowed to do." "That's how I feel." "If I had my say in it, I'd just say to everybody," ""no."" "This is sort of the representation of the some of the cats that were killed during "operation snowplow"." "Operation snowplow was an 18-month covert operation that I ran out of the Springfield, Illinois office that dealt with the buying, selling and killing of big cats." "They were picking up unwanted pets, and they would take them up to Chicago and they would shoot them..." "They had an old factory." "We identified the killers, the taxidermists, the tanneries, the meat market." "There was a place outside of Chicago called czimer's and they sold all sorts of things..." "Lion, tiger, leopard." "I was able to determine the sources for the live cats, the roadside zoos, the circuses, the mom and pop breeders, and the users, the trophy collectors, the CEOs and businessmen who had a strong desire" "to put a mounted tiger in their trophy room." "One of the things we uncovered during snowplow was that dead cats are worth more than live cats." "You don't have to feed them." "You don't have to take care of them you don't have to worry about cages or escaping." "Vet bills." "So you kill it and you have a market for the skin, the skull, the meat, the gall bladders, the bone." "All of the sudden, after you start parting that cat out, it's worth a lot more than a $1000 investment." "What?" "I would never do the tiger farming, you know, tiger bone, tiger pelts, tiger tails, teeth." "That is..." "That is sick." "I mean, even times that I could have used the money, for number one," "I wouldn't know where to sell that cat to and I wouldn't do it, spiritual thing, way too deep." "But the thing is, if you had someone who was only in it for the business," "I could see someone being so greedy and doing it, tiger farming, easily I could see it." "Hey, kitty." "Come here." "Get it." "Bizzy cat, what you got?" "As far as my neighbors," "I had to notify each one that lived within a quarter of a mile." "I sent out certified letters telling them I would be keeping 3 tigers under a state permit." "I'm an animal lover, really, and I'm not gonna say." "Dennis doesn't have a right to take care of the animals." "He's raised some of those animals and I know he loves them." "The only thing that I would have any concern with is if he takes care of them properly and he follows the rules to the dnr." "His record of ever complying with anything he ever promises to do is practically nil." "The neighbors, basically the ma and tom winterrowds, the old stick in the mud he opposes anything and everything and he's hated me for 20 years anyway." "And those neighbors have a right to send around a petition, but they need to get at least 25 names on it and a public hearing would be held on it, as far as opinions." "And he actually managed to struggle and muster up 25 names." "That was really difficult to do." "It took us almost 30 minutes to get enough signatures to stop..." "To say we need a public hearing." "This has nothing to do with whether he gets a permit or whether he doesn't get the permit." "We're just gonna have a chance to sit down and talk to dnr." "He rents a lot of property around." "I have the petition." "And it's people that rent off of him." "I had people refuse to sign thad petition, because they were afraid of Dennis hill." "Diane, the neighbor over here, she wouldn't sign the petition and he evicted her." "Dennis, he's been a good neighbor to me and I don't fear the tigers, and I was to sign a petition saying that I feared those tigers and that I was scared on a daily basis of this" "and it's not true, and I didn't believe anything on there and I wasn't about to sign it." "I just had no idea it was such impact on my landlord." "That's Dennis." "This is my farm." "I have twice rented that house with people who made a deposit or signed a lease agreement, and before they moved in they found out that that was next door to that methamphetamine dealer, at that time, one of them used that." "And that it was next door to the lions and tigers, and they both backed out of the contract." "I never knew that he couldn't keep renters because of that that's what he said in this petition, this letter." "It's quite on the contrary." "He evicted me because I'm not afraid of him." "It's not gonna make or break me, but I'm just getting tired of it." "And I'm getting tired of seeing his name in the paper as the big hero." "Due to his character and past record of taking care of the animals," "I don't think he should ever have a permit." "Everybody would be better off if hill wasn't there." "Right now I have, I'm not sure, between 5 and 700 signatures, letters from across the U.S.A.." "And I have the foundations, solid foundations of no escapes." "Basically I think that's what this whole thing can only come down to, there's risk in everything." "You know, and it's just a public safety issue." "We hope to gain insight from comments that the public are going to give us on issues pertaining to Dennis hill's permit applications that we may not be aware of." "Sign in, please." "The last day, which is here, and glad to see it come and glad to see it go." "You know, just a new beginning." "On one hand, they're going to a very good place." "I will still be in control of anything..." "From the phone standpoint." "And the main thing is, after 6 months I can get them back." " Hello." " Hello." " How are we doing?" " All right." "I'm Dennis, glad to meet ya." "That's the tiger there, that's the one?" "Yeah, that's one with no stripes." "There have been a few of those come through here." "I don't think that one will fit in the truck." "Well, we'll leave it then, what the heck." "So, how are we doing?" "Good, tired." "We've been up since yesterday morning." "I've been up since October 1st, so..." "You know..." "Snaggles, come here." "Snaggles." "So which cats are going?" "The 2 leopards." "The little orange male here goes with you." "These 2, uh..." "Pretty much all these guys." "My cats are gonna be upset with me." "And you have how many tigers there, 4?" "4 tigers and 3 African lions." "Our rescue's called" ""big dad's, big cats rescue and educational center"." "We have school groups, kids and that come in." "Ask the same question, everybody, who wants them for a pet, and they all say "yeah", and then we're showing them the cubs, well then we go around the corner and we show them the big ones" "well, now who wants it as a pet?" "Not as many of them say "yeah" anymore." "I guarantee you, Jeff, it's gonna come down to you're gonna have some white babies up there." "I'll be able to bring some cats back, as many as I want." "But, realistically, I'll be leaving a few up there so he can have a few white kittens." "He's getting a pretty hard to get a hold of gene pool for his time and trouble and, you know, he's getting set up big time, really, for something that took me 20 years to arrive at." "I try not to breed." "If I breed it will be for our use, for educational." "I don't like to breed and sell, because that's what becomes a lot of problem, especially in the state of Wisconsin, because anybody can own them." "And they just keep breeding them to keep getting money for them." "It doesn't matter where they end up." "Tazzi, you're all right." "Now I'm trapped." "Come on, come on." "Come on, one of you." "Vixi, you want to go first?" "All right, girl." "Come on, ozzy boy." "All right, drop it." "Tazzi cat." "Tazzi cat." "I am going to the meeting in flat rock." "These are people I've known all my life." "And unless you want to alienate yourself from all of these people in the community, you try to be as kind as you can, but you also have to, once in a while, kind of dig your heels in and say, "enough's enough."" "And that's what I've done." "Enough's enough." "I've always been under the impression that Mr. Hill ran one of the poorest facilities in the country, and I'm very grateful to see the improvements that have been made there under the prodding of the Indiana dnr." "If that kind of improvement was going to be ongoing" "I suspect I could be backed into letting him keep some tigers, but I don't generally think it's a good idea." "Ok, we wanna come down to here." "Wait." "Everybody just be quiet and don't do anything here." "Tazzi, you're all right." "Tazzi, you're all right." "Could you bring me the sheet of plywood?" "Actually, I need a door panel." "Is there a..." "Tazzi, you're all right." "Come here and hold this." "I was on the bobcat earlier that day trying to get things organized and things out of the way and I ran into tazzi's cage, the side of the cage, and damaged the clamp." "Tazzi." "Tazzi." "You're ok, you're all right." "You're ok, you're ok." "You're gonna be all right." "Come here, baby." "Tazzi, she was one who was still spooked fromm the visit from the dnr." "You're ok, tazzi cat." "You're ok." "The thing is, you don't want to be irrational." "You can't rush around." "You gotta move quietly and easily and work them." "Calm down, baby." "Calm down." "Calm down, calm down." "You're all right." "What do you want us to do, I mean..." "She'll calm down, she's just spooked." "I mean, trust me." "How long you guys had tigers?" "I've owned them for 7 years." "7?" "I've had them for 22, trust me." "It's like this." "If you don't take her, she stays here," "I lose them all." "This is not a forum whereby you come and speak to the crowd." "Your comments are being given to the dnr, so the dnr can make the decision." "So if you could please just come up here and address both myself and lieutenant colonel Mike prior with your comments so we can record them accurately." "Being in that..." "in the community, in a small community, and having the wild animals around, it could be a danger to all of us." "It really doesn't matter if it's me asking for this permit or anybody else, there should be some guidelines." "Now, if one of these animals gets loose, does the guy asking for this permit have means of stopping this animal?" "Does he have a tranquilizer gun, a gun?" "Can he legally have that?" "Mr. Hill is a convicted felon." "He has a... let's see if I've got it here." "A criminal record about like this." "While he's down, let's kick him." "He cannot legally own a firearm or any weapon that fires a projectile." "Therefore, how's he gonna recapture or comply with that section of the dnr rules?" "Just like you're having problems with the dnr," "I've had problems with the county." "Yeah." "A little worried about taking tazzy." "She looks like she's pretty upset." "If she is that aggressive normally, then it might not be a good idea to take her, you know, where we're open to the public." "But if we can get her to settle down," "I think everything will be all right." "But it's looking like she's pretty upset." "What do you say, Eric?" " You know tazzy." " Mm-hmm." "Tell him about tazzy." "Tell him how you know tazzy." "Well, I mean, we always come out there, and, I mean, he could go right in with her." "I could go up and pet her." "I'll tell you what." "That cat let us go in there and we even put a garden hose down its throat trying to dislodge this bone or whatever object was in her throat." "Yeah, and she actually let Dennis perform the heimlich maneuver on this cat, and it dislodged it." "Okay, we're gonna take her." "It's no problem." "Here's what we're gonna do." "I want to keep loading these guys." "I am not here to harass him." "I went down there and talked to him yesterday." "Oh, by the way, I've known Dennis very long... since the early '70s." "We went to the same high school." "It's nothing personal, never has been, between he and I." "I represent about 600 acres just right around his area." "Now, this spring..." "and he knows this... this spring when I was planting, first thing I did, I came up to a horse skull." "It wasn't 50 feet from his property." "And I know years ago you had horses." "So, you know, I picked it up and I figured that, you know, he buried it somehow." "So I picked it up and threw it out." "Well, a couple rounds later, I saw a tiger head." "This is a tiger head 'cause it had the fur on it." "The eyes was intact, everything's great." "I mean, I was gonna go out and pick it up and throw it out of the way, it... it just... it stunk." "So I went and got him and asked him to remove it." "A couple rounds later, I saw the tail." "So I just planted over the tail." "Yeah, it's... it's... that's pretty odd, you know." "I mean, after you get done thinking about how odd they... the oddity of it and how strange it is, then you kind of... you wonder, okay, how'd they die?" "I don't know." "I don't know how they died." "I think you guys should..." "I think you guys ought to know how they died." "I mean, if he loses one, you should know that, you know?" "I... he had 60 animals back there at one time." "60." "And I think he had one permit when he had... with the federals." "I think." "I don't know that for sure, because for 20 years," "I didn't even get the first call from Dennis, usda, you guys or anybody that there was an exotic cat back there." "20 years." "I guess I do have a problem with his catch methods." "If... if there is one that gets loose, which I wouldn't know, he hasn't even contacted me telling me he's got one in a cage." "So why would he call..." "contact me and tell me he's got one out of a cage?" "So police him, okay?" "And I think you understand how I feel about it." "If you give him the permits, you know, just... just take care of it." "All right?" "Go on, snaggles." "Okay." "Okay, let it down." "All right, let's throw these guys in here." "Good job." "Go check it out." "Go on." "Go on." "Go on, tazzy." "You get ready with the door now." "She's thinking about it." "She's thinking about it, so you be ready." "Tazzy cat, you went in there." "Just like I knew you would." " Ready?" " Mm-hmm." "You're heavy, girl." "Tazzy, you're okay." "You're all right, tazzy cat." "You're all right, tazzy cat." "I think it's going real good, really." "Better than what I expected." "I was a little worried a while ago, but costa says that that ain't the worst one." "She says the one on the." "Is the worst one yet, so I don't know." "Done!" "Hey!" "A lot of things that was just mentioned to me is irrelevant to the main issue." "I can care less whether he's been convicted." "He served his crime and paid it." "Why convict him again over permits?" "He has his animals better contained than the Indianapolis zoo has their tigers contained." "And I have been to both places." "In fact, the zoo has even had some incidents and Dennis has had none." "I have four kids, and I would feel perfectly safe living next door." "There's a lot of things that you might not think are safe to live next to or whatever... interstates, jail, stuff like that." "He may have had too many." "I think he knows that." "But only because of his love for the animal." "To deny him his permits, I think, would be a great, great injustice." "All right." " Good?" " Yeah." "Far out." " Give that to your ma." " Yeah, I'll give it to her." "You bet." "Anyway, that should take care of it." " Thanks, Eric." " See ya." "Hold on to that." "That's where my taxes were paid." "Okay." "We're trying to load zinni up right now." "She's okay." "She just doesn't want to come out of her box." "And, you know, kind of a wait and see and being patient type of game." "So hopefully she'll come on out of there and we'll get her loaded up." "Been spraying water on her, poking her, doing everything." "We put meat in there." "She just doesn't want to come out." "Nobody can go up there except him, so we just gotta wait." "It's my turn." "I've known Dennis hill for 30 years." "When the dirty little pictures were on the front page of the shelbyville newspaper" "I said, "there's gotta be a problem."" "Because I know Dennis hill, and this didn't just happen." "He wouldn't allow it." "I knocked myself in the head for a few days then finally I picked up the telephone and I called him." "My mother passed away in may." "Said, "Dennis, do you need help?"" "Dennis is a proud man." "He's a very humble man, a lot of people are." "But I offered my help to him." "He accepted it." "I put $7,000 into that compound up there." "I know what's up there." "My husband helped him put it together... almost those two singlehandedly, just about." "Mr. Burton helped build cat houses." "There is absolutely no reason why Mr. Hill should not be allowed to get his permits, retain the animals that he now has up there and recover a couple that have been taken away." "Because the caging is there for them." "The housing is there for them, and it's empty." "It's as if his children have been taken and held for ransom." "And I would like to see that change." "Thank you very much." "I think it went very well." "I think we got a lot of comments tonight on both sides of the issue, and I think two weeks from today we should have a decision." "And then Mr. Hill would be notified either way." "Zinni, I don't think we're gonna be able to take." "She's... she's either really worked up or she's really aggressive, so I don't think we're gonna be able to take her." "I guess Dennis is trying to find somewhere else for her to go." "The last day, October the 30th," "I moved the tigers all in one day." "The one cat that I had a problem with, it was z... zinni." "And it took me about probably two and half hours to get her out of her box, and she was full-blown tiger mad." "I definitely know when to walk away." "But at that point, you know, there was no walking away." "It was gonna be me versus her, because she had to leave because dnr was coming the next day to inspect." "Finally got ol' zinni all packaged up." "And he come over and he goes, "we ain't taking that cat."" "So I called Joe taft of exotic feline rescue center and he's been an ass in all this, too." "He... he just wants... he just wants them white cats and them leopards of mine but I called him up and... real nice and I said, "this one cat's gonna trip me up." "Can I bring her down there?"" "And he... he said yes." "We were afraid to open the trailer." "We couldn't get zinni to respond..." "I mean, tapping on the trailer, making noise outside." "She did not move, did not make any noise." "We didn't know if she was alive or dead when we opened the trailer." "So we'll see how this goes." "I see..." "Zinni, it's okay, sweetie." "Come on." "She's calmer with our keepers." "Our keepers can go over there." "She's made friends with several people here." "Joe knows how to work cats, too." "But this little long-haired hippie can work 'em better than he can." "And he doesn't like that." "Okay, come on." "Come on." "Come on." "You're okay." "I passed the state's inspection with flying colors." "Lazy cat, come here." "But I still had to move one cat out of here." "I had four cats... rain, tarot, blizzi and Marci cat." "Now, I had to get down to three, and what no one knew, that week, Marci was on her last leg." "You know, I mean, she was 20 years old and... and she was... she was... it was inevitable I was gonna lose her." "And January the 29th we lost her." "This is where I buried Marci at in the front yard." "We bought a... a real neat pet coffin for her and had a little showing." "Come here, you big tiger." "Come here, you big tiger." "Tarot." "Tarot." "I believe, you know, there was a higher power that, I don't know, Marci, had give her per... place..." "For tarot to be here." "You big 'ol tiger, ain't ya?" "Hmm?" "Hmm?" "We pick up downed livestock." "These horses have not been dead very long." "These heads are... are..." "are a choice piece." "Everybody... everybody likes a..." "likes a head for dinner." "Put that off for a while." "What do you say, Joe?" " Hi, Dennis." "How are ya?" " Pretty good." "You?" " Good." " Good." "In the course of the last few years, many of the tigers that are currently in our possession have come directly from Dennis." "What are you doing?" "Okay, now, in here is a..." "is another one of your tigers." "The one that came from Michigan?" "That came... no, this is the one that came from." "Yeah." "We got a call from a veterinarian in... in the Chicago area who wanted us to take two tigers that were left in the care of an elderly blind man whose son was in prison for 50 years." "This is a guy that, on a plea bargain deal where they dropped half of the charges... plead guilty to 122 counts of child molestation." "I'd sold him two tigers and a... and a leopard." "That's... he had two tigers when we went there." "And... and there was no leopard there." "Huh." "See, I lost track of him." "I mean, the guy had money, and he was a... seemed to be a very responsible person." "And he worked for the coast guard." "He was coast guard port authority." " You know?" " Actually, he was the harbor master." "Harbor master?" "So you had a lot of rain down here lately?" "Boy, it rained like mad last night." "It did at my house, too." "Tony, come here." "What are you doing?" "What are you doing, you pretty boy?" "Huh, what?" "What are you doing?" "Huh?" "The first two tigers that came from Dennis were Patty and Tony." "Yeah." "Patty is not with us anymore." "They were great shape, doing very well." "It was just the fact I was focused on white tigers and... and I hadn't bred Patty anymore, nor used Tony anymore." "And... and I was trying to downscale." "Patty has six and a half hours of emergency surgery." "The day after we got her." "We picked her up on a Thursday afternoon, and she was in such bad shape that she damn near didn't live." " Not even." " Her teeth were rotted out." "II... she had an abscessed tooth." "It came and went." "She had nine abscessed teeth." " Well, it was like this..." " There was no coming and going about it, Dennis." "It's like this, Joe." "People will... people will say..." "She was in misery and you were too fucking lazy and cheap..." " No." "No." " To get her a veterinarian." "I made more money than you ever seen." "That's the trouble, you made a lot of money." " Not from breeding." " You made a lot of money at the expense of these animals..." " No." " And you did not give a damn about these animals ever." "No." "No." "You did not give a damn about these animals." " It's easy for you to say that." " It is because I work my fucking butt off every day." "Me, too." "Me, too." "For years." "I go back farther than you do." "Yeah, right." " Farther than you do, Joe." " Yeah, you work at it, Dennis." "The first little leopard... you brought your first little leopard to my house in 1994." "How many cats did I have then?" "And you got mad and left because I couldn't get your leopard bred." " I... well..." " You can't touch me." "Dennis, I don't want to touch you." " Yeah, you do." " I don't want to hear you lying about these tigers." "I want to see you out of business." "I want to see you out of business." " Well, it's too bad..." " I want to see you with never another tiger." "'Cause I'm back in business." "Well, you are not back in business." "They're gonna come hang your ass, and I'm gonna help 'em." "Joe, they're all after me anyway." "Don't you know that?" "They are." "They are." " Why?" "It's not because of..." " Why?" "Because you do a terrible job." "No." "No, no, no, no." "You can stand there and say no, no, no all you want, but you're living in a fantasy world, son." "You are." "And you're... you're living in the fantasy world standing on the mountain thinking you're the king." "Joe, you..." "I'm not standing on a mountain thinking I'm the king." "Yeah, you are." "But I know scum when I see it." "I feel sorry for you." "I'll say a prayer for you tonight." " Well, I appreciate that." " Okay, all right." "That will make me sleep better." "I'm done with ya." "This is ridiculous." "Now, you want to go see some more animals that have come out of him?" "Hello." "Just a minute." "Shane, can you get to the telephone?" "It could get better, but I'm on probation." "With a state permit, I can't do any breeding." "What are you doing?" "But I'm not done." "I know how to beat all these... all this totally." "You know." "Dennis has always bred cats, and he's always trying to get that white one with no stripes." "And he hasn't got that white one with no stripes yet." "And he's kind of obsessed with it." "So I can see him breeding again to try to reach that goal." "My name won't be on it, you know." "Costa doesn't have my last name." "And she'll get her usda and live here and the cats'll be hers." "And I'll be back to square five maybe, you know?" "It'll all start clicking again." "That's... that's the plan." "This is my house that I moved into in November." "I like it because it's very big and spacious." "Me and Dennis definitely have a bond with the animals." "If they would have stayed, I would have stayed." "Not necessarily out of guilt, but just because the bond between me and him and the animals would have stayed, and it would have been there." "And once they left, it kind of just fell apart." "So..." "She'll always be my best friend." "I need somebody in my life, though." "But it'll only be the right person." "You know, I've got..." "I say I need somebody in my life." "I've got somebody in my life." "They're, you know, in the kitchen right now tearing the floor up." "You know, or out there wondering what I'm doing on this side of the house when they're over there on that side of the house." "I..." "I think... ow!" "This is Stella." "Stella cat, you're mean to me, ain't ya?" "Huh?" "Don't bite." "Basically, I mean, you can hand-raise 'em and give her everything you've got, but they're not a puppy." "They're still a tiger, and the instinct is right out there in front." "It's a wild tiger, that's all there is to it." "Ain't we, huh?" "If they would find me in a tiger cage one day dead, you know what?" "That'd be fine with me." "I mean, what better way to go?" "Put a nice white tiger on my tombstone and say I did what I wanted." "Mahatma Gandhi said that the best way to evaluate the moral progress of any community is the way they treat their animals." "I've lived, died, begged, borrowed and stole for 'em." "I'm just a caring, loving person." "And that's just..." "that's all my cats know, 'cause that's all they've got from me." "They don't have a big swimming pool yet, but it's in the..." "it's in the future." "Just a money problem." "Give us money, we'll build a fenced-in 20 acres and let the tigers run wild." "That's my grand illusion." "Dennis hill and everybody else who breeds lots of these big cats for sale, where they shouldn't be sold, is at the root of the problem." "This is boo boo." "He's an 18-year-old black bear." "We got him from Dennis hill from flatrock, Indiana." "Actually, we were hoping to be able to give him a bigger cage." "We just gotta wait till the funds come in to do that." "Tazzy girl, come here." "Out of the tigers that we got from Dennis, tazzy and Rachel would probably be my favorites." "Even though tazzy was..." "wanted to eat everybody when we went and got her." "These are Rachel and Zeus' daughters." "They were the first litter that they had here." "In the next probably two weeks," "I'm gonna apply for four more permits for four more cats."