Celebrities Helping Pets
- 1. "A ""Cause"" to Celebrate (Prince)"
- 2. "How ""Shweet"" It Is! (Cartoonist Patrick McDonnell)"
- 3. More than a Game (Bob Barker)
- 4. Den Mother (Tippi Hedren)
- 5. Something to Believe In (Rikki Rockett)
- 6. One Life to Give (Catherine Hickland)
- 7. Canine Crusader Burt Ward
- 8. Casting Out the Demons (Linda Blair)
- 9. Donna Salyers Makes a Difference
Den Mother (Tippi Hedren)
Rebecca L. Rhoades
In 1972, actress Tippi Hedren, who rose to fame in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Marnie, began work on a film that examined the desperate plight of Africa’s great cats, who faced widespread eradication due to encroaching civilization, sport hunting and poaching. It was only meant to be a nine-month shoot, but it was an experience that changed Hedren’s life forever.
The movie, Roar, followed a scientist’s work with lion, tiger and jaguar cubs. To make the film, a variety of African animals were needed. Hedren planned to hire animal actors, but she soon learned that trainers wouldn’t allow their animals to work with animals they didn’t know. “So it was suggested that we acquire our own animals to do the movie,” says Hedren, “and that, of course, opened a whole new can of peas.”
Before long, Hedren acquired 100 animals and purchased the land on which the movie was filmed. She also found her calling—when the movie wrapped after five years, Hedren stayed on the property and devoted her life to caring for and educating the public about exotic cats. In 1983, she formed the Roar Foundation, which allows her to receive donations to maintain the property and provide care for the animals. Today, Hedren still lives on the same property, known as the Shambala Preserve.
Home on the Range
Located on 72 acres in Acton, CA,
about 30 miles north of Los Angeles, Shambala (Sanskrit for
“place of peace and harmony”) serves as a safe haven
for approximately 60 exotic cats— including cougars,
leopards, servals, lions, tigers and snow leopards—and one
remaining African elephant, all victims of the exotic pet trade
or the entertainment industry.
Once doomed to a life of abuse or even an early death, the animals now live out their lives in comfort and safety. They reside in open compounds, many of which range in size from one to two acres, that mimic their natural habitats, although the leopard and mountain lion compounds must be enclosed due to the animals’ proclivity for climbing. Here the cats can roam freely and interact with others of their species, and they are moved periodically to prevent boredom.
“I’m so fond of what Tippi has created at Shambala,” says Gretchen Wyler, president of Los Angeles-based The Ark Trust, of which Hedren is an honorary board member, “because unlike hundreds of other sanctuaries, it’s not just keeping the animals alive that matters to Tippi. Her concern is not only to provide a sanctuary but to provide a very comfortable, interesting habitat.”
For the Animals
In recognition of her hard work and
dedication to the animals, Hedren has received applause from
other members of the animal welfare movement. She’s
received the Helen Woodward Animal Center’s Annual Humane
Award and the Wildhaven Lion and Lamb Award. In 1996, she was
honored with the ASPCA’s prestigious Founder’s Award,
which is presented to individuals who have demonstrated a
lifetime of achievement and devotion to animals. During the
ceremony, she brought the audience to tears with the story of
Shambala’s then two elephants, Timbo and Cora.
Timbo, a former resident of a Vancouver animal park, came to Shambala in 1972, where he remained the lone elephant until 1978, when Hedren heard about a circus elephant who was about to be euthanized for “bad behavior.” “That’s what they do in the circus,” she says. “They call it a bad animal, but when you incarcerate any living being for doing nothing wrong, it will retaliate.” When Cora arrived at Shambala, Hedren and her staff were apprehensive about how the two elephants would get along, but almost immediately the elephants had entwined their trunks and were caressing each other. Intrigued, Hedren researched their histories and learned that the two elephants were taken from Africa on the same boat. “When they got to Frankfurt, Germany, Cora went to the circus, and Timbo went to the animal park,” says Hedren. “After all those years, they still remembered each other.”
Sadly, Cora died of a heart attack in August 2000. “It was one of the most awful things I’ve ever been through,” Hedren recalls. “There was no illness, no preparation. At least Timbo was there with her when she died, so she probably told him that she wasn’t feeling well.”
Hedren’s main interest, though, is big cats, and over the years, a few have held a special place in her heart, including a lion who was abandoned by his mother when he was five days old, and Shambala’s first tigress, who lived on the preserve for 19 years. Then there is Patrick, a liger (half lion, half tiger). Rescued from a roadside zoo in Illinois, Patrick had been living in a cage that was so small that the muscles in his hindquarters and back legs had atrophied. “Patrick’s one of the most interesting animals I’ve ever met,” says Hedren. “He’s social, he loves to play, he has a great sense of humor, and he loves to be around us.”
But she’s also quick to point out that these animals are not pets. In fact, of the 60 cats who reside on the preserve, staff members can interact freely with only five of them.
“They are dangerous,” says Hedren. “Everyone in my family has been hurt, so I’m aware of the dangers that exist with [all wild] animals.” During the filming of Roar, Hedren’s daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, then 19, was attacked by a lioness, requiring approximately 50 stitches on her face, and Hedren also bears the scars of the animals’ unpredictability. Her leg was fractured when she fell off an elephant during filming, her arm was severely scratched by a leopard, and she was bitten on the chest by a mountain lion. Hedren’s stepsons and her ex-husband were also hurt, “often and badly,” she says. “So you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that these animals aren’t pets. They’re predators. Look it up in the dictionary. It doesn’t say ‘pets.’”
Not surprisingly, Hedren shares her home with six “pet” cats. Two years ago, she was living with only one cat, Rocky, when a neighbor called her, saying that a feral cat had given birth in his garage. Thinking she could find homes for the kittens, due to the large number of animal lovers who passed through Shambala’s doors every day, Hedren accepted the kittens. “Well, I opened the box, and all these little kittens looked up at me and said, ‘Hi, mom!’ So I kept them, and I’ve never had so much fun in all my life.”
While Hedren continues to work frequently in motion pictures and on television, it is her years spent with the animals that give her the most satisfaction. “I still look at them today with the same awe that I had when I saw my first lion or tiger. They lend a great deal of quality to my life, and I’d like to think that they’re happy here,” she says. “It’s thrilling to me to have given Cora the wonderful last years of her life, and it makes me feel really good to do something for another being who’s had a bad twist in life. Those things are important to me.”
© 2001
ASPCA Animal Watch - Spring 2001
Next in
How You Can Help Pets: Celebrities Helping Pets:
Something to Believe In (Rikki Rockett)
EMAIL
SHARE
