Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World

by Carl Hiaasen

  Control has been the signature ingredient of all the company's phenomenally successful theme parks; every thrill, every gasp, every delightful "surprise" was the product of clockwork orchestration. Once you paid your money and walked through the turnstiles, there was virtually no chance (until you walked out again) that anything unrehearsed would occur in your presence. "Nothing can possibly go wrong here, because nothing can possibly happen," wrote Elayne Rapping in a superb essay in The Progressive. "The idea that nature might be 'red in tooth and claw' was utterly foreign to [Walt] Disney's world view. But even more than blood, he abhorred dirt. Indeed, it is no accident that Disney's central ambassador is a neutered, hairless, civilized rodent—by nature the filthy scourge of every slum in the developed world."

  Real vermin weren't the only animals shunned by Disney theme parks. In 1988 the Orlando resort was infested by a squadron of black buzzards that roosted indecorously atop the Contemporary Resort and other photogenic landmarks. The birds are large, stoop-necked, foul-smelling carrion eaters, and their glowering presence was deemed disruptive of the Disney ambience. In particular, the vultures were drawn to Discovery Island, one of the few locations in the Disney domain where wild native birds were welcomed.

  And the buzzards came on strong. They vomited and pooped copiously, with no regard for the sensibilities of tourists. Equally dismaying were graphic reports that the buzzards were hassling the imported flamingos and preying on the helpless chicks of herons and egrets. Various methods were employed to frighten the aggressive raptors—flares, fireworks, helicopters—but the buzzards never left for long. Scores were captured and relocated far away, but it scarcely put a dent in the ever-growing Discovery Island flock.

  Then, mysteriously, the birds began turning up dead. Accusations flew, and suddenly Disney—squeaky-clean Disney—found itself charged with shooting, starving, and even clubbing them with sticks. Sixteen state and federal wildlife violations were filed against Walt Disney World and several "cast members."

  Black buzzards are protected by U.S. law and are thus allowed to go pretty much wherever they choose. As odious as they might be to humans, the birds play a crucial ecological role as scavengers. A murdered buzzard was rotten PR for any socially conscious multinational corporation. As Peter Gallagher wrote in Tropic magazine: "From the carcasses arose one of the messiest scandals in the 19-year history of Disney in Florida." Although the company disputed most of the animal cruelty charges, the ugly publicity didn't abate until Disney made peace with the Audubon Society and donated $75,000 to a trust fund managed by Florida's game commission.

  To Disney executives, the buzzard incident soberly reinforced the idea that Nature is nothing but trouble. Wild creatures don't get with the program. They've got their own agenda.

  Yet ten years later, here's Animal Kingdom. What made Disney change its mind about the zoo business? Money, of course. Tons of it was being made in central Florida by Busch Gardens, Sea World, and a host of not-so-slick competitors offering one attraction that Disney World didn't: live exotic critters. After a week at the Magic Kingdom, tourists of all ages yearn to see something with real fur. How many embraces from six-foot prancing chipmunks can a kid be expected to endure?

  So Team Rodent made the bold move. It began, typically, by recruiting some of the top zoological experts in the country. Then it started shopping for wild animals. One of the first to be acquired was a rare black rhinoceros, a five-year-old female. Only three thousand of the animals are left in the world. Disney said it had purchased this one from a wild-game ranch in Texas. If all went as planned, the rhino would soon be released in a man-made African-style habitat, where it would be fed, watered, and protected for the rest of its life.

  Again from the press kit: "Disney Imagineers have created tropical forests and jungles, streams and waterfalls, and savannas and rocky ridges—fascinating lands filled with natural beauty, where animals and visitors will participate in the unrehearsed dramas of life in the wild."

  Unrehearsed—finally! No more remote-controlled crocs. Animal Kingdom would be the real deal, "unrehearsed dramas," meaning: If the critters decide to fight or fuck, we won't stop 'em.

  Tragically, the young black rhinoceros never got a chance to test the limits of her Imagineered freedom. She died abruptly in the fall of 1997, months before the Disney zoo opened.

  Discreetly the carcass was transported to the University of Florida in Gainesville, where a team of veterinarians performed a necropsy. It didn't take long to discover the cause of death, lodged deep in the animal's guts: a branchlike object, twenty-one inches long and three quarters of an inch in diameter. One end was sharp, having been cut with either a machete or a saw. The stick had punctured a lung and ignited a terrible infection. Disney's rhinoceros had died of pneumonia.

  For doctors, the larger mystery was how the instrument of death had gotten inside the beast. Rhinos browse on grasses, leaves, twigs, and shrubs, and they're not always well-mannered eaters. It was conceivable that an exceptionally hungry animal could slurp down a twenty-one-inch branch without chewing it. And that would have been the working theory about Disney's dead black rhinoceros, that it had ingested the lethal stick from a pile of vegetation, cut for it as food by well-meaning handlers.

  Except for one problem: The stick was found at the opposite end of the animal; specifically, in the last segment of the long intestine, within arm's reach of the rectum.

  That strange and unsettling fact didn't fit the sloppy-eater scenario. A rhino's digestive tract is similar to that of a horse—twisting, lengthy, and convoluted. The doctors at the necropsy couldn't imagine how such a long sharp object could travel almost the entire circuit of a rhino's intestines before snagging. "Hard to believe," one of them stated flatly.

  Yet the alternative seemed unthinkable: that a person or persons unknown had savagely inserted the stick via another orifice. But who? Why? And, for God's sake, how? Although the Disney rhino had been known as exceptionally docile, it was mind-boggling to suppose she might have stood still long enough for …

  Back and forth went the sensitive discussion, and ultimately the veterinarians chose the circumspect approach: They declined to make an official conclusion about how the branchlike object might have entered the mammal, or from which end.

  However, the doctors did agree on one important finding: The nearly ossified condition of the intruder proved it had been inside the rhino's intestines before Disney had taken delivery of the animal. The news must have been a huge relief to company executives, providing a strong defense against accusations of neglect or cruelty. There'd be no need for a delicate inquiry as to who, if anyone, had so viciously violated the young pachyderm—whatever happened had taken place before the rhino arrived in Orlando. For added insurance, Disney botanists reclaimed the death stick and analyzed it. They reported that the tree it came from wasn't native to Florida.

  Still, Team Rodent remained worried. No upbeat spin could be put on a story about an endangered creature expiring under mysterious circumstances on company property. With memories of the abused-buzzard fiasco still tender, a wall of secrecy went up. Anyone with knowledge of the rhino's demise was instructed to keep quiet, and to this day the attending veterinarians remain silent on the matter. Rumors about the rhino death have spread among employees throughout Disney's kingdoms; in one version the lethal instrument is said to be a two-by-four bristling with nails. A small story eventually did appear in the Orlando Sentinel and other newspapers, though with no mention of the possibility of foul play.

  Upon learning how the rhinoceros had died, I assumed the worst: that the poor beast had been violated by a disgruntled or depraved Disney "cast member." It wasn't impossible. They had peepers and flashers, didn't they? Inside those stuffy costumes were real human beings with real human problems. What if Pooh had blown a gasket? What if Grumpy the Dwarf had no longer been able to suppress his darkest urges? Or maybe even one of the Mickeys? It was like something off the specialty video rack at Peep L
and, this criminal debauchery of a rhinoceros; a rap verse off The Great Milenko. Sleaze lives!

  Try to understand. For older, hard-core generations of Florida natives, no scandal is so delectable as a Disney scandal. This warped delight blooms out of deep resentment over the destruction of childhood haunts—an ongoing atrocity in which the Walt Disney Company remains gravely culpable, directly and indirectly.

  Example: Peter Rummell, one the hotshots behind Celebration and the ill-fated Civil War theme park in Virginia, was hired away from Team Rodent in 1997 by the St. Joe Corp. Rummell's stated mission is to turn St. Joe, once primarily a paper manufacturer, into a leading developer of commercial and residential real estate. St. Joe happens to be the biggest private landowner in Florida, holding 1.1 million acres, much of it unspoiled. The potential for an environmental holocaust is enormous, and there's no comfort to be taken in the knowledge that a Disney spawn sits in command.

  For those of us who grew up here, the anti-Mickey burn is chronic and ulcerating. It manifests in behavior that's not always mature, well reasoned, or even comprehensible to outsiders. As ghastly as the rhinoceros story is, I admit it perked me up a little at first. In my imagination I saw the top-secret necropsy report landing with a slap on Michael Eisner's desk; pictured his expression cloud as he scanned the shocking medical description; watched the perspiration bead as he contemplated the dreadful ramifications of an endangered-mammal sodomization at a Disney attraction. . . .

  But no. Whatever happened to the poor beast wasn't Team Rodent's doing. And yes, I was disappointed at the news; crestfallen, if you want the unflattering truth. A rhino scandal would have been a dandy.

  But why wish for such a perverse twist of events? After all, aren't the folks at Disney mostly good and decent and hardworking? And don't they honor, in spades, their pledge to bring fun and happiness to kids of all ages? Sure they do. Being dutiful parents, my wife and I made several pilgrimages to Walt Disney World when our son was small, and he always seemed to have a blast. How could such a mirth-giving enterprise and the people behind it possibly be regarded as evil? Even Insane Clown Michael—I know he's not really a puppy-killing, rhino-molesting, foul-mouthed ghostwriter of third-rate misogynist rap songs. I know he's probably not even the Antichrist. He's just an exceptionally ambitious guy trying to do a job, a guy who somehow has come to believe his own gushing press releases, a guy who honestly doesn't see the whole picture.

  Maybe that's the kind of person it takes, and maybe that's what is so scary. To do what Eisner's Team Rodent does, and do it on that scale, requires a degree of order that doesn't exist in the natural world. Not all birds sing sweetly. Not all lakes are blue. Not all islands have sandy beaches.

  But they can be fixed, and that is Disney's fiendish specialty. What Team Rodent has "recreated" in Orlando—from an African savannah to an Atlantic reef, from a Mexican pyramid to a Chinese temple—has been engineered to fit the popular image and to hold that charm for tourist cameras. Under the Eisner reign, nothing in the real world cannot be copied and refined in the name of entertainment, and no place is safe.

  Chamber-of-commerce types in Key West got ticked off recently when Disney World unveiled its own quaint version of America's southernmost city, a half day's drive from the real thing. Granted, Disney's version of old Key West is cleaner, safer, and less margarita-sotted than the place after which it's modeled. Yet there's an element of insult—not to mention hard-hearted arrogance—in erecting a replica gingerbread town to compete with the original for tourists. I don't mind, because it means fewer rental cars speeding past my house, but a business owner in Key West might feel differently.

  The point is, you can spend a solid month at Disney World and never see evidence of the real Florida, save for the occasional renegade buzzard on a roadkill. The Magic Kingdom might as well be in Tucson or Nashville or Tacoma; it wouldn't matter. Once inside the gates, the experience would be virtually identical—not at all unpleasant, just fake. A sublime and unbreakable artificiality. People might like it, but it's not natural.

  Which brings us back to the story of Nala, the lioness that escaped from the JungleLand zoo. For three glorious days she eluded searchers who tracked her by foot, 4-by-4, and helicopter. Satellite trucks lined State Road 192 and concerned-looking news correspondents beamed updates to points around the globe. Was the lion heading toward Disney World? How long before she got there? Was it safe for tourists to stay? What should they do if they encountered the animal? The drama escalated hour by hour, experts warning that the cat soon would be growing hungry. . . .

  Now, in my lifetime I've seen many tourists so poorly behaved they deserved to be eaten alive by something. Tourons, they're called down here. They come to Florida, they trash the place, then they go. So out of reflex I began fantasizing what might happen if, by providence, a Disney touron crossed paths with the half-starved lion—a rustle in the vinyl topiary, a tawny flash, a muffled outcry … and somewhere the ghost of Charles Darwin exclaiming, "Right you are! This is what it's come to!" Or if not a loutish snowbird, then perhaps Ms. Kathie Lee Gifford, although for her the cat probably would need its claws. Another tasty possibility: Insane Clown Eisner himself, dragged down from behind as he hotfooted it across the phony savannah. Yo, Mikey, here's your frigging "animal kingdom."

  But nothing so brutally ironic unfolded. Nala the lost lioness never made it to Walt Disney World; as a matter of fact, she headed in the other direction. Game wardens found her sulking beneath a palmetto bush, barely 150 yards from JungleLand. They zapped her with a tranquilizer dart and hauled her back to the cage, where she awoke and promptly began to chow down. The international press corps packed up and departed, as did the police, wildlife officers, and highway patrol.

  And life goes on as before at the plastic fantastic Reedy Creek Improvement District. All is safe. All is secure.

  A new project, Disney's Wide World of Sports, has opened on what once was a two-hundred-acre wetland. Now there's a double-decker baseball stadium, an athletic field house, championship clay tennis courts, beach volleyball (sixty miles from the nearest natural beach), and a parking lot for thirty-five hundred automobiles. Next to the ballfield an All-Star Cafe franchise is being completed, its investor-celebrities including Andre Agassi, Shaquille O'Neal, and Tiger Woods.

  Touring the new sports complex with an Orlando reporter, Disney vice president Reggie Williams marveled, "I remember walking out here three years ago, months before we even began planning. There were snakes, spiders and all kinds of animals out here."

  Reading that remark, I couldn't help but wonder about the water moccasins living in the marsh that Team Rodent had drained and bulldozed. And—God forgive me, it's nothing personal—I had a fleeting vision of young Agassi himself thrashing about on the red clay, a plump five-foot cottonmouth attached to his serving arm.

  Reptiles are fond of cool, dark places, you see, and a Nike gym bag would do fine in a pinch.

  "There were snakes, spiders and all kinds of animals out here."

  But did Disney get them all? Did the bastards really get them all?

  I don't think so.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CARL HIAASEN was born and raised in Florida, and his dream is to be banned forever from Disney World. He has worked for the Miami Herald since 1976 as an award-winning investigative reporter, magazine writer, and, for the last thirteen years, a metropolitan columnist. His novels include Tourist Season, Native Tongue, and, most recently, Lucky You, and have been translated into twenty-one languages. He has also contributed lyrics to two songs by Warren Zevon, "Rottweiler Blues" and "Seminole Bingo."

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