In Missouri: A Beastly Display

By John Skow

Dave Hale is just a touch worn down, maybe about nine-tenths beaten to a frazzle. But he hangs in there, functioning on pride and coffee. He sells a porcupine for $100, which is about $98.75 more than any porcupine that can't play God Bless America on the musical goose-horns is worth. He sells an ostrich egg for $17, a slink of ferrets for $21 apiece, two ducks for $4 each, and a pregnant monkey named Bonnie for $575. A female African lion cub, not more than 6 in. high, 30 in. long including tail, and only a few weeks old, goes for $450. "Dime a dozen," says a professional cat man. "Everybody's got too many lions."

Things are winding to a close. Out of the bottom of the barrel comes a coatimundi, looking like a fox that has attended the Harvard Business School. Guinea pigs: Hale starts the bidding at 25-c- and, working the crowd expertly, talks the price up to $1.50 a head. Sold to Randy Horstman, 12, of Metropolis, Ill., who has bought heavily in gerbils some minutes before. Now someone stretches up and says something to Hale, high in his red-painted auctioneer's pulpit, and Hale looks unsure whether to giggle or break down crying, and he clicks on the microphone and says: "Folks, man here bought himself a 7-ft. 6-in. camel a couple of hours ago, and he's only got a 7-ft. horse trailer to put it in, so what we're gonna do right now ..." It was promptly resold.

The show has been playing for two days in a circus tent at Hale's 5-H Ranch, a drive-through animal park in Cape Girardeau, Mo. It has brought animal fanciers from 43 states, New Zealand, Mexico and Canada. Close to 2,000 head of animals are on hand, including a couple of elephants (the bidding on one goes to $21,000, but there is no sale, because the owner values them at $40,000 apiece). There are four giraffes, axis deer, oryxes, African crowned cranes and elands that were hand-raised and are, says Hale, "as gentle as a sick pig." Lynxes, cougars, midget horses are on the block too, as well as a fraternity of elk, including one handsome fellow named Fred, who, according to Hale, has attended two national Elks conventions.

Come to think of it, there seem to be more elk than a reasonable man would think necessary. One of the bidders explains why. There is a lively market in the Orient for powdered elkhorn, a surefire aphrodisiac, and an 18-to 20-lb. rack of antlers will bring about $105 per lb.: "Of course, you got to cut the rack off when it's still in velvet, and some folks think that's cruel, but it don't do no real harm, and you still got your elk."

A door opens at stage left, and four small aoudads, delicately horned mountain sheep from North Africa, spring into the auction cage. These are young ones, only about 20 in. high at the shoulder, but they are old enough to react as adults to the menacing noise of the auction crowd, and they form a protective circle, rumps together, horns toward the danger. Many of the larger animals grow even more agitated in the cage. A big, fine-looking red deer stag charges Earl Tatum, an animal handler from Eureka Springs, Ark., who is working the cage, and strikes the metal shield Tatum carries with an emphatic clang. Earlier a large male gemsbok hooked murderously at Tatum with his sword-sharp 30-in. horns. The handler, smiling a little, turned him aside. He is a beefy middle-aged man with tattooed forearms, and he looks like an old professional middleweight who has agreed to spar with an amateur.

"He sure rang our bell, Earl," says Bob Hale, Dave's older brother, who is handling part of the auction. He is red-faced and stocky, and he looks like the man named Doc that mothers tell their sons not to play poker with. Dave is quick and calm when he has the mike, but Bob's style is to generate a lot of steam. "Eleven, eleven, eleven," he chants, peddling a zonkey, an exotic cross between a zebra and a donkey. "Now twelve, twelve, buy, buy, buy, I hear twelve, now thirteen, buy, buy -- " he stops his chant to point at a hesitant male bidder who sits next to a woman whose mouth turns down at the corners. "Do you have to get her say-so every time you make a decision?" Then the chant resumes: "I hear thirteen, fourteen, fourteen, it's a honey, it's sold for $1,300, and you won't regret it." A.C. Parsons is counting the money he has left. He is a dry-wall and insulation contractor from Waco, Texas, who says he came to Hale's auction with a flock of ostriches to sell and about $25,000 to spend. Parsons began buying exotic animals a few years ago as a hobby, but things got out of hand. Next spring he plans to open his own 850-acre drive-through animal park at Clifton, Texas. He wants a giraffe in the worst way, and how much it costs him will determine how many other animals he can buy for his park. The giraffe bidding stops at $4,000, and Parsons gets a fine twelve-footer with low mileage and no rust.

Some of the buyers are animal-park owners, like Parsons, and most of the beasts they cart off will be well cared for.

Others are private hobbyists. Some of the animals they have bought and sold -- the caged cats, in particular -- are scarred and sorry-looking. "I'm not real crazy about this part of the sale," Dave Hale admits.

The remaining buyers own game preserves where gunners who are quite sure that they are sportsmen pay to shoot at prize specimens in half-tame herds. The sheep and deer and antelope to be killed are cared for very well indeed -- after all, no one wants to give the taxidermist a carcass that was sick or underfed.

It is well past suppertime by now, and the buffalo-burger stand has closed. Some thing like $ 1 million worth of animals has changed hands. Time to go. On the way out, the observer meets a man from Ken tucky who has just bought a lion. He seems dazed. No, he says, he is not an animal-park owner, he is a farm hand. "Well, I really couldn't say why I bought it," he says. "I didn't rightly need it, but I saw it sitting there. " --John Skow

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.