“If you are calling for deer or buffalo removal, please leave the exact location for pickup today. Due to our workload we are asking farmers to please drop fresh dead calves off at our gate. We do not take sheep, goat or pork. But on occasion we are able to take live or dead cows, horses or ponies. . . . We are not open to the public and you cannot join at the gate. You must have a valid membership card to get in any Saturday or Sunday after 1:30 p.m.”
The first part of Jill Carnegie’s phone message is for callers who want to contribute to her food bank. The last part is for would-be visitors to her Valley of the Kings Sanctuary and Retreat, and is enforced with heavy-gauge chain-link fencing, two Rottweilers and a pit bull.
The sanctuary in Sharon, Wis., is a combination hospital, hospice, spa and zoo for some 200 exotic and domestic animals that have been dumped or rescued in various states of ruin. They include 51 big cats, 3 bears, 2 wolves and a camel named Chewy for his penchant for gnawing at the clothes of visitors. Valley of the Kings is home to more exotic felines than all of the Chicago area zoos combined, says Carnegie, 46, who has personally nursed each of these creatures to good health and provides food, medical care and a clean, safe environment for them to live out their days.
“Animals, animals, animals–I’ve always had an incredible thirst,” she says. As a child, “I used to steal bread from the house to feed the squirrels and was always hauling home animals that needed to be rescued. Then I discovered I had an interest in cougars and began reading books and asking questions of just about anyone from whom I could learn something.”
Carnegie has devoted her life to that interest since 1974, when she, her first husband and 18 animals settled into the four-room farmhouse on 10 acres just over the Wisconsin border near Harvard, Ill. Most of the animals have come from zoos and circuses, or are castoffs from private owners ill-prepared to keep them as pets.
“We have many exotics that were kept illegally as pets,” says Carnegie. Even when the owner is discovered, she says, fines and jail times are minimal. Instead, “it is the animals that suffer [from] this kind of irresponsibility,” she says, although owners often pay another price. One woman required 45 stitches in her face after she was mauled, Carnegie recalls. “She was trying to clean the cat and it felt cornered.” The cat wound up in Carnegie’s care.
Almost every animal at the sanctuary represents a horror story.
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Sheba, a 16-month-old lioness, was raised as a pet in a Chicago apartment, where she grew too large to be safely contained. Sheba arrived at Carnegie’s refuge starved, stunted in growth and suffering from seizures and a severe case of rickets. She had fractures in her rear legs and spine and could barely move, says Carnegie, showing a photograph of the once-emaciated animal.
“A 30-cent-a-day calcium supplement could have spared this animal its suffering,” she says, shaking her head in dismay. A special diet, medication regimen and Carnegie’s care restored Sheba to health.
Zipper, a three-quarter white tiger, had been used in British Airways and Esso Petroleum commercials. When his “acting” days were over, he was placed in a Missouri sanctuary from which he escaped, breaking through a thin chain-link fence and killing another tiger. “They were going to kill the tiger when they called me,” says Carnegie. “We left right away and made a 10-hour trip to bring him home in our van.”
She says many such facilities throughout the United States call themselves sanctuaries but don’t meet the safety or care standards to qualify for the designation. Valley of the Kings is licensed by the state and federal governments and is regularly inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Carnegie said that Wisconsin is lax about regulating animal care and that hunting preserves and breeding farms don’t need licenses. “Technically, even I don’t have to be licensed, but I want to be. I want reports to be made and want it known that I’m meeting high standards of care.”
Dr. Chris Pagel, a veterinarian from Janesville, Wis., volunteers his Saturday afternoons at the sanctuary and, like other vets who visit the animals, vouches for the quality of care they receive. “Usually I find the animals so healthy I wind up spending my time building cages.
. . . They’re all fat and happy and enjoy their environment,” he says, noting that they do not pace restlessly and that they are responsive to visitors. That doesn’t mean he approves of exotic animals living in confinement. “Irresponsible people are breeding and selling these animals. They’d be better off if they’d never been born. But they were, and Jill has taken responsibility to care for them.”
As Carnegie passes their cages, she greets the big cats by name in a high-pitched voice, stopping occasionally to allow one to nuzzle her face through the fencing.
“The animals are worth much more dead than alive,” she observes at one point. “There’s a man two hours north of us who makes his living going to [animal sales] and buying people’s pets. Then he makes ashtrays out of their paws and uses gallbladders for aphrodisiacs. There’s an Asian market in which bear gallbladders can bring tens of thousands of dollars. Or else, animals are used for their pelts.”
Kuma, a black bear, came from Madison, where she’d been in a children’s zoo for six months. When she got too old to be cute, she was sent back to the breeder and wound up at an exotic-animal sale, the only one Carnegie ever went to.
“I saw the gallbladder guy bidding on her so I bid $300 to outbid him,” she says. “I also wound up buying 40 foxes so he wouldn’t get them either,” she adds with a victorious chuckle.
Carnegie’s compassion is not limited to exotic animals. “We have tons of ‘farm misfits’ that come to us as lion food and they’re sometimes still alive. I don’t feel it’s right to take a life force so we put them back together again, and now I have lots of pets: horses, cows, sheep, goats and pigs. I have a goat that runs around the yard with a thoroughbred horse and they’re best friends.” All the animals are neutered.
When the animals die, they are buried in a cemetery on the grounds, alongside Carnegie’s oldest son, Edward John, who was killed in 1998 when his car struck a deer while he was on a food run for the animals. Markers and statues of felines mark the grave sites, and Carnegie holds candlelight vigils in the cemetery every Sunday night.
To feed so many large carnivores, Carnegie collects road kill around the area and accepts dead or dying livestock from neighboring farms. “If meat is needed, we call local stores for fresh chicken,” she says. “We spend about $400 a day for the meat when we don’t have deer or calves. We need 2,000 pounds of meat a day.”
Valley of the Kings is incorporated as a charitable organization, with a seven-member board and Carnegie as president. Carnegie and her husband, Jim Tomasi, do not draw a salary, and last year reported a personal income of about $5,000, derived from payment for dead-animal retrieval in two counties. Most of the sanctuary’s estimated $200,000 budget is funded from charitable contributions, memberships and sale of items, such as a yearbook of photos, through its Web site at www.votk.org.
Many members also volunteer to help with animal care. “Think of it this way: I’m paying money for the privilege of shoveling animal doo,” says Mark Shavitz, a retired CEO of a heating and air-conditioning company who received his membership for his 50th birthday from his wife, Debbie. He regularly makes the 1 1/2-hour drive from Northbrook to clean out cages and visit with the animals.
One husband-wife volunteer team, Sue and Todd Kaercher of Madison, say they don’t believe animals belong in cages. “But [Carnegie] had no choice,” Sue Kaercher says. “They’re all bred in captivity and don’t know any better. What is their alternative?”
A side benefit of Valley of the Kings is the practical experience it provides veterinary students at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Dr. David Brunson, associate professor of surgical sciences, brings groups of students there for training. “Despite what organizations like PETA may think,” Brunson says, “I think these animals would rather live in captivity than be put to sleep.”
Pat Scott, a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and a volunteer at the refuge, says that although the animal-rights organization generally disapproves of sanctuaries that exploit animals for profit, “Valley of the Kings is different in that it is a care facility for animals with no profit motive.”
Amy Rhodes, a PETA spokeswoman in Norfolk, Va., says Valley of the Kings, formerly JES Exotics, has been cited by the Agriculture Department for having inadequate pen space for the animals and insufficient food storage. However, she says, USDA reported that the problems were corrected and that there had been no complaints since 1998. “Well-intentioned people often find themselves overwhelmed because of the responsibility of handling so many animals,” Rhodes says.
Tom Solin, chief of special services for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, also reports that Carnegie had violations relating to the size of animal enclosures about 10 years ago but that the problems were resolved. Dr. John Kopanen, who has inspected the property for the USDA over the past 10 years, says that, as a veterinarian, he believes Carnegie is taking excellent care of the animals, given the constraints of her budget.
“I think sanctuaries such as Jill’s are essential because animals need a place to live out their final days,” says Renata Spatafora, a longtime docent in the education department of Lincoln Park Zoo, which keeps its animals until they die. “Jill has a lot of hybrids that no one else would give a home and I highly approve of her operation, which is why I volunteer there.” One of these hybrids is Nook, the world’s biggest liger-lion-tiger mix at 1,500 pounds.
One would think the roaring of lions across an open field would antagonize neighbors. But not only does Carnegie get no complaints, her neighbors often contribute their dead livestock to the operation and volunteer their services. “I work on their vehicles for them and never charge them labor,” says neighbor Ron Sorenson. As for the roaring of the lions, Sorenson said he loves it. “You’d think you were in Africa or something. It’s really neat.”
Sorenson and his wife, neighbors of the refuge for 14 years, have two children ages 6 and 9. “I never worry about the kids because I know [the animals] are being well fed and taken care of. I don’t concern myself that they’ll be out hunting for food.” Carnegie says that in 27 years there has never been an escape or injury.
In her cramped living quarters, which she sometimes shares with animals being nursed back to health, Carnegie sits at a dining room table crowded with medicine bottles. Left with only 30 percent of her lung capacity after a bout with lupus five years ago, Carnegie also has heart trouble, failing eyesight and difficulty walking on an injured ankle. She has no medical insurance and finds it hard to get treatment, but she expresses little concern about her own mortality, only for her animals’ welfare after her death. A more immediate concern is the $50,000 she says she needs by June to buy out her ex-husband’s share of the property.
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A spiritual woman, Carnegie believes it will all work out. “The Lord will provide; he always has,” she says. “One day my animals were hungry and we had no food for them. I prayed all day that something would happen so that my animals could eat. That afternoon my neighbor’s cow had a heart attack.”