Unwanted Exotic Animals Find Home in Wisconsin

Valley of the Kings Sanctuary and Retreat

Nov 17, 2009 Kathleen Strelow

You'd never expect to find exotic animals living in the heart of rural dairy land, Southern Wisconsin.

Husband and wife Jill Carnegie and Jim Tomasi used to think that breeding large felids was appropriate, but it didn’t take long for them to realize how wrong they were. Fortunately their realization came before any breeding took place. This was over thirty years ago and since then they have spent their lives taking care of exotics that have no place else to go.

The Story of Sammy and Farah

Large cats began pouring in but the couple had no enclosures for them, so two unfortunate tigers, Sammy and Farah, had to be turned away. This is when they knew they had to open their sanctuary to public support and since then have never had to turn away another needy animal. Finances, however, have been extremely tight. They are 90% publicly funded with the rest having to come from their own family.

Carnegie and Tomasi tried to place Sammy and Farah in what they believed to be a safe and humane environment. To their horror they found the tigers were horribly abused. Sammy, a rare twenty-three-year-old endangered Sumatran tiger, and Farah, a twenty-one-year-old Bengal tiger, had been together for twenty years where they performed with Barnum and Bailey’s circus. The pair performed until their hips were too weak and then they became worth more dead than alive.

Sammy had been surgically defanged in an attempt to make him “safe,” but unfortunately he suffered excruciating pain from an infection in his jawbone. People need to remember that it is not possible to make a tiger “safe,” and unfortunately it’s the animal that suffers.

Animals Find Their Safe Haven

Valley of the Kings Sanctuary and Retreat is located on 10 acres of farmland in Sharon, Wisconsin where Carnegie and Tomasi share their family home with lions, tigers, leopards, cougars, bears, and other misfits who find shelter with them. Each animal has shelter from the elements, some with spacious pens. They provide a home for abused, abandoned, retired and injured felids, exotic and domestic animals as well as unwanted, retired and abandoned farm animals.

Valley of the Kings educates the public about the bond between human and animals in the natural world. They teach that private and commercial ownership of these animals, along with hunting for profit and sport, will eventually lead to extinction for these creatures. Most importantly, they teach that when these animals are removed from their natural habitat, we take away their freedom, wildness, and essence of being.

Valley of the Kings does not find homes for any of the animals who end up at their sanctuary. It is their home, where they are provided the best available diet, housing, vet care and positive human interaction. This is their last stop, and their last chance. When an animal that lives at Valley of the Kings dies, they are buried there at the cemetery with respect and dignity.

Sanctuary is Not a Zoo

Valley of the Kings is not a zoo. A zoo’s primary function is to make money, with the animals on display for the public to see. At Valley of the Kings they are there for the animals, their primary concern. A zoo has a fully paid staff, where Valley of the Kings has no paid staff and a corps of volunteers who work hard to make life more manageable for the animals.

They are not open to the public but Valley of the Kings invites their sponsors, members and volunteers to join them on weekends. They depend on donations from their members, friends and dedicated volunteers for their continued existence. With rising costs and no state or federal funding, they find themselves with dwindling donations. To make matters worse, someone recently used their bank account fraudulently over a period of five months to steal over $3,000.

Thousand Pounds of Meat Needed Daily

Over 1,000 pounds of meat is needed for feed every day, so you can imagine the cost to keep a place like Valley of the Kings operating. Local farmers donate their dead cows and calves to the sanctuary but that only accounts for about 60% of the cats’ food. This does not include food for the other animals, the cost of hay or the various construction projects that are constantly popping up.

Members are encouraged to make their visit a working visit, participating in whatever work project might be underway at that time. Visiting hours are Saturday and Sunday, 1:30 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. but closed on holidays. Saturdays are work days from 10:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Visitors are then taken around to visit with the permanent residents of the sanctuary.

The copyright of the article Unwanted Exotic Animals Find Home in Wisconsin in Wildlife Preservation is owned by Kathleen Strelow. Permission to republish Unwanted Exotic Animals Find Home in Wisconsin in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.