A Tiger By The Tail -- John Babich Didn't Realize His Interest In Raising Exotic Animals Would Raise The Ire Of County Officials

-- RAVENSDALE

Swinging into the driver's seat of his mud-encrusted Toyota 4Runner, the one with the license plate "EXOTICS," John Babich apologizes for the smell of dead animals.

It's just one of those things you have to put up with when you keep tigers in your back yard.

A couple of times a week, Babich loads dead calves into the back of his vehicle. For Babich, the unmistakable odor of carcasses is a small price to keep his two nearly full-grown Bengal tigers and his young snow leopard happy.

Not everyone is so accepting.

"Some of my dates don't like it much," Babich admits.

But the tigers come first. So on New Year's Eve, Babich took his date to the dairy where he gets his carcasses and picked up three more. Then they fed them to the cats.

His date thought it was, well, interesting, Babich says.

Babich's tigers have also attracted the interest of his neighbors and the county government.

Some of the neighbors fear the tigers could escape and have complained to the county. King County officials discovered they had very few regulations governing tiger ownership - Babich is apparently the only tiger owner in King County in years. Responding to the complaints, county officials did come out and make sure Babich's cages were safe.

The neighbors were not mollified.

"I don't care about the cage," says Jennifer Sahli. "I realize they're not going to get out of the cage by themselves, but

accidents happen."

When neighbors learned Babich was adding a snow leopard to his collection, they pushed the county to pass an emergency regulation prohibiting ownership of more than two potentially dangerous cats.

That puts the fate of Babich's snow leopard, Himalaya, up in the air. Babich and his lawyer claim the county failed to act on his permit in a timely manner; county officials haven't made a final decision yet.

"It's not that we hate tigers; I just don't want them in my neighborhood," says Sahli, mother of a 4 1/2-year-old child.

The controversy over his cats has left Babich a little defensive, but no less determined to keep them.

"These are my dreams," says Babich (pronounced "BAB-ick"). "All my life, I knew I was going to raise these animals."

Growing up on a farm in Eastern Washington, Babich had a habit of bringing home animals and caring for them. "I brought home everything that would walk," he recalls.

He figures he got it from his mother. When she was growing up, she raised things like badgers and deer. "So it kind of runs in the family," he says.

But for some reason, wild cats have always captivated Babich. He hints at some formative early experience, but he won't talk about it.

In any case, his fascination with the animals speaks for itself.

A chiropractor, Babich has filled his office with pictures of tigers, small statues of tigers, stuffed tigers and tiger knick-knacks. He's spent about $10,000 feeding and caging his cats and doesn't regret a penny.

"For some reason," he says, "I was supposed to do this."

Now 30, Babich shares a home with his brother and sister-in-law in Ravensdale, a small community set between Black Diamond and Maple Valley amid the Cascade foothills. The three of them live on a little more than 40 acres. Their property is at the edge of a subdivision recently scratched out of clear-cuts.

JUST FOR THE TIGERS

Babich says he moved to the area expressly for his tigers. He had lived in California for about eight years, but when a friend gave him the tigers he brought them to Ravensdale. He followed a few months later, and now he's building a house adjacent to his brother and sister-in-law.

The Babiches' back yard, where most people might have a barbecue grill or a horseshoe pit, is circled by a high chain-link fence. Around the outside of the fence, there's a dog run for five whining Rottweilers. In the middle of the yard a chain-link cage surrounds a huge rotted stump.

From inside the cage a tufted face keeps a cautious eye on visitors. This is the home of Himalaya, Babich's 8-month-old snow leopard.

Babich coaxes Himalaya out of the cage and slips a leash over its neck. The snow leopard rolls over playfully. It has the heft of a medium-sized dog, with a cat's alertness. Babich encourages visitors to scratch the snow leopard.

"It's fun to watch people's faces when they see him," he says.

A couple of hundred yards from the house Babich has built a double-walled cage for his Bengal tigers. It's made of specially ordered, heavy-gage chain-link fencing. The inner cage has a double-door entrance system.

The tigers have about 1,000 square feet of outdoor space, and an attached truck trailer provides them shelter from the wind.

A little over a year-and-a-half old, Cherokee and Cheyenne are close to full size. That means huge. Bengal tigers can reach 500 pounds.

They are, at least, declawed in their front paws.

Like streetfighters, the two tigers circle their cage, exuding an almost palpable sense of strength. When visitors approach the cage, Cherokee and Cheyenne rub their cheeks against the links and make a low "whump" noise that Babich says is their version of a purr.

Babich enters the cage with a confidence equal to the tigers. He's tall and muscular, with an intensity that commands the tigers' attention.

"You teach these guys to respect you from day one," he says.

Babich has never had any formal schooling as a tiger trainer, but he's always had a knack with animals, he says, and he constantly seeks out experts.

LEARNING BY DOING

Most of what he knows about raising cats, though, Babich learned by doing. Before getting the tigers, he also had a cougar. The animal died when it climbed a tree while on a tether and strangled to death.

Now he spends an hour each morning with his tigers, and another hour and a half in the evening. On weekends he's in their cage most of the day.

Although the controversy over Babich's tigers started over safety concerns, it's also at root a dispute over whether individuals should be allowed to own rare and potentially dangerous animals.

People like Lee Werle, curator of mammals at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, categorically oppose private ownership of wild cats. He calls it little more than an ego trip for the owners.

While some private owners are responsible, Werle says, many keep their animals in substandard cages. Because private owners tend to keep poor breeding records, he adds, the animals are useless for preserving genetic diversity. The bottom line for Werle is that big cats are dangerous even in the best hands.

Although Babich says there have been no recorded injuries in the United State from privately owned Bengal tigers in 20 years, Werle says he personally knows of at least two maulings from ocelots, a much smaller cat.

"They start breeding them," Werle says, "and pretty soon they've got too many, so their standards start dropping and they get out with people who don't know what they're doing."

Reacting in large part to Babich's tigers, a county advisory committee has recommended a complete ban on private ownership of potentially dangerous animals, including tigers, snakes and wolf-dog hybrids. The ban would not affect people who already own such animals.

Defending private ownership, Babich contends private owners often have better breeding success with their animals which, he says, is a sign they can provide better care.

His cats came from other private owners, and they are five and six generations removed from the wild. He accepts the need to regulate caging and other animal facilities but opposes outright ownership bans on philosophical grounds.

"That's just the first step on taking away your rights to have horses or dogs that could bite someone," Babich says.

When the controversy dies down, Babich says, he'll build a larger cage for his tigers. He says he has no intention of breeding them. Assuming he can keep it, he hopes someday to bring Himalaya to schools to teach kids about the importance of preserving wildlife.

"I don't do it for my ego; I don't do it for a macho thing at all," Babich says. "I do it because I had the opportunity to keep these cats alive.

"(Having tigers) is not such an unusual dream . . . I run into people daily who have the same desire. I like to share the experience."