But Barmore, aware that a muddy riverbank does not a home make, wasn't sure what to do next. Luckily it was just then that Susan "Penny" Schaefer, a neighbor of Barmore's, spotted the menagerie. "I looked up, and there was Terry," recalls Schaefer, who had been standing on the bank debating whether to row out to her own waterlogged house. "He had all these dogs and cats and birds with him. I said, 'Don't worry about it. I've got a place for them.' "
She wasn't kidding. Thanks to Schaefer's initiative, Henry's Ark, a local 600-acre nonprofit wildlife sanctuary and petting zoo that lies a safe three-quarters of a mile from the river (PEOPLE, March 24), has become more like Noah's Ark since floods ravaged much of the Midwest and South earlier this month. Including Barmore's brood, Schaefer, 47, the director of Henry's Ark since 1992, has added to the more than 90 year-round residents some 26 critters left homeless by the flood. Among them are 12 dogs, five cats, four chinchillas and a Nubian goat. Many were dropped off by owners who left without giving their names. "People were panicked because they had no place to live themselves," says Schaefer, who was living in a trailer on the Ark property. "It's been like a mad rush at a mall."
Barmore, who has moved in with his brother while Heyburn lives with her mother, tries to see his pets daily. "It was wonderful," he says. "Penny said, 'Don't worry. You can leave them as long as you want.' " That, says retired journalist Henry Wallace, 81, the owner of Henry's Ark, is typical of Schaefer, a former bartender and butcher he first hired as a housekeeper 13 years ago. "This was all Penny's idea," he says. "She went through with it, and I'm delighted."
Of course the thrice-divorced Schaefer, a native of Grand Rapids, Mich., and longtime animal lover ("My mother was afraid to let me out because if there was an injured animal, it would end up inside," she says, laughing), isn't doing it alone. Helped by her daughter Amy Ellis, 26, and volunteer Becky Searcy, 14, she keeps the cats in a turkey-wire cage dubbed the kitty condo and is on watch to make sure the dogs roaming her property don't bicker. "So long as they're good, they can run free," she says. The dogs are taken to the vet for baths and, if needed, inoculations. (Wallace, who has inherited wealth, picks up the tab.)
Providing comfort is also part of the job. One dog, Jack, a 6-year-old black Labrador retriever mix belonging to Barmore and Heyburn, "was so distraught when he arrived that he cowered in the corner and wouldn't come inside," recalls Schaefer. "Now he lets me pet him on the head." Luckily, Nanny B, the 4-year-old black Nubian goat, was helped through her separation anxiety by a 4-week-old miniature pygmy goat. "She had lost her mother about the same time Nanny B got here," says Schaefer. "They comforted each other by sleeping together."
Now with the flood waters receded and the cleanup under way, Schaefer isn't sure how long she'll keep the animals—or even if some owners will reclaim them. A man who brought a gray parrot, she says, "said he'd be back once he got settled. I haven't heard from him yet." Nor does she expect to again see the woman who left the four chinchillas. "She said she just didn't want them anymore," says Schaefer, who has a list of people willing to adopt all the pets.
Most owners, however, are eager to end the separation and come by for frequent visits. "As soon as I got there the other day, Nanny B started hollerin' at me," says her owner, Sharon McBride, 46, an office assistant who kept the goat in her father's barn, which is still too muddy for Nanny B to return to. Yet despite McBride's offers to pay for her care, Schaefer has refused. "We just want to do what we can for the animals," she says with a shrug. Then Schaefer politely excuses herself. After all, there are guests to be fed.
MICHAEL A. LIPTON
FANNIE WEINSTEIN in Prospect
- Contributors:
- Fannie Weinstein.
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