Time Short For Noah’s Cash-Strapped Animal Shelter Low On Feed And Faces Inspection, Insurance Premiums

Noah’s Exotic Wildlife Shelter managers say the ark is in danger of sinking.

They said Monday that the nonprofit home for abused, abandoned and unwanted exotic animals is running out of food, money and time.

“You don’t want to be like the boy who cried wolf, always saying we have a crisis, but we’re down to a matter of days now,” said shelter manager Glenda York.

The shelter, four miles west of Rathdrum, must find $500 more for liability insurance by Aug. 10, she said. It needs $200 to pay for the county’s annual inspection, and only has a few weeks’ supply of donated ground turkey for food. The shelter’s checking account is overdrawn by $3.

Furthermore, a U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian has told the shelter it must build a roof over its cougar cages by Aug. 10.

Without an influx of cash and volunteers, York and her husband, auto mechanic Chuck Ulery, fear they may have to shut down. They doubt they’d be able to find homes for most of the animals.

“I’m so upset about the present it’s hard to think about the future,” York said. “You’re sitting in the office deciding who goes first and what’s the most humane way to euthanize them. You say ‘I’ve been living with this animal for so many years. It’s really scary that I might have to be the one who goes out there and ends that relationship because we can’t afford the insurance.”’

The shelter has roots running back to 1986, when York saw an ad for a 6-month-old African lioness whose owner was tired of her. Shortly thereafter, York and her late husband inherited two tigers. And then some cougars.

“One by one, they came,” said Ulery.

In March 1992, the shelter became Noah’s, and began charging people $5 admission to see the animals, which now number 13. Noah’s has two lions, two tigers, four cougars, three bobcats and two Canadian lynx. There also are four dogs the couple has rescued from the pound.

“We’ve had a chinchilla, a couple of potbellied pigs. We had three goats at one time,” said York.

The shelter’s always been a seat-of-the-pants operation, surviving on donated animal food and building materials. There is only one rake, one shovel, one wheelbarrow. York, Ulery and one volunteer do most of the work cleaning pens and feeding the animals.

On Monday, a local contractor was delivering gravel, part of 20 cubic yards donated to the shelter by a local gravel pit. The rock will line cages.

“Money’s always been tight. Chuck and I end up subsidizing it 75 or 85 percent,” said York. “We just don’t have the money.”

Most of the animals are throw-aways, discarded by people after the novelty of an exotic pet wore off. One bobcat, York said, was declawed with a pair of wire cutters while a cub. There was no anesthesia, and the animal’s paws were mangled.

The shelter cares for the animals. It won’t pay for them, sell them or breed them, but does try to place them in good homes.

For now, Noah’s has stopped taking in animals because it can’t feed or care for any more, York said.

“We know of three cougars, a dozen bobcats, Canadian lynx and foxes all looking for homes,” she said.

The shelter will have its annual meeting Aug. 11. At the top of the agenda: how to keep the shelter running.

“Chuck and myself both spend every waking moment, it seems, trying to figure out how to keep the telephone on or get some more vitamins or fuel to run the lawn mower or weed eater,” York wrote recently in a letter to supporters. “We spend every dime we have and have sold most anything that is not an absolute necessity to keep the cats going.”

One of their ideas is to allow people to sponsor the shelter. With annual costs of about $30,000, York points out, the shelter could be supported by 3,000 people sending in $10 per year.

Closing Noah’s doors isn’t something she likes to think about.

“We listen to the lions’ roar at night,” she said. “It’s really hard to imagine what it would be like with the pens empty.”

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