by Ralph Helfer
But life’s pull is very strong, especially when you’re surrounded by animals, who remind you every day about the cycles of nature. Soon my world was again filled with blessings. The skies in the African nights hold the brightest of stars, and I believe that two of those stars followed me home and fell into my life when I returned to California. The first had been there before, however briefly. Just before I left for Africa, I had met Toni, and we had a short but very passionate relationship. Then, of course, I was gone for a year. But the whole time I was away, even despite the love I had felt for Pippa, Toni was never far from my thoughts.
It’s pretty clear to me now that the trip to Africa enabled me to have a relationship with Toni. It gave me the maturity to see just how extraordinary she was, filled with some of the most wonderful contradictions. She had attended college, and modeled professionally, but she was equally as comfortable in cutoffs and dirty sneakers as she was in her evening gowns. She was highly spiritual, and could hold her own in conversation with some of the most learned religious scholars. Most impressive to me was her tremendous kindness and compassion, which allowed her to empathize completely with the exotic animals we lived and worked with.
Eventually, some time after I returned, I asked Toni to be my wife. She came to me at a time when I was in need of someone to gather in the reins of my runaway spirit, to slow me to a more tempered pace, and I credit her with guiding me through a time of tremendous, although sometimes difficult, growth.
The second star was my daughter with Toni, a child named Tana, after a river in Kenya. She was, and is, one of the greatest blessings God has bestowed on me, and I feel that she, like her mother, was brought to earth to share her life with animals. She inherited her mother’s beauty, inner and outer, and her incredible smile immediately transmits her love of life to everyone—animal or human—who comes in contact with her.
From the very beginning, Tana and Zamba had a special relationship. My relationship with Zamba was so close and so trusting that I never even thought twice about bringing my daughter up around him. Zamba knew lots of baby animals, and he always treated Tana with the utmost gentleness and respect. He’d never lick her skin, for instance, only her clothes, as if he knew that his rough tongue would hurt her. And I never saw his claws out when he was anywhere near her. They grew up together as siblings, and indeed, Tana called him her brother.
Needless to say, many people still can’t believe I let them spend time together. Animals are dangerous around children. Children are unpredictable. They’re small, they run around, and they have high-pitched voices—just like prey. To this day, Zamba is the only lion I’ve ever known whom I could imagine trusting with a child. But trust him I did. They used to watch television together—cartoons or Westerns—after dinner. She would curl up against him with a bowl of popcorn and drift off. My heart was filled with happiness to see them together like that; it was like beauty and the beast, except to me they were both beautiful.
Tana grew up to be an actress and stuntwoman in her own right. I’m sure a lot of people would accuse me of irresponsibility and child endangerment now. I’m sure that there are those who say that I was naïve at best, and dangerously crazy at worst, to bring my daughter up in a house with a lion. All I can say in my defense is that none of us ever really thought about it. Zamba was my son, the way Tana is my daughter. I never looked at him and saw teeth and claws and menace, in the same way that I never saw him as a pet. He was my friend, and a member of the family, and we lived in Camelot.
Tana’s upbringing was—to say the least—unusual. She was probably one of the only children in the world who had a lion around as other kids had a family dog. It was not uncommon to see her riding on his back around the ranch.
Tana came home from school one day in tears; she had been reprimanded and sent to the principal’s office for telling tall tales. Except, of course, in Tana’s case, the tall tales were true. She had fallen asleep in bed with her parents—and a lion. There was a chimpanzee pulling her pigtails during dessert. The school suspended her, and told her not to come back until she was ready to be truthful. I was so furious that I loaded her and our beautiful elephant Modoc into a trailer and drove right back to the school. They talked about Tana parading around the parking lot on top of that elephant for years to come, and nobody ever accused her of lying again.
Sometimes I joke around, saying that Tana was raised using affection training as well—but it’s only half a joke. In my experience, all young living things benefit when boundaries are enforced sensitively, and with compassion. I also feel sometimes that Tana, growing up as she did in loving communication and harmony with other species, is a more highly evolved human being as a result. At any rate, I am not sure how much her unconventional upbringing had to do with the beautiful vibrant, energetic, warm-hearted woman she became—but I wouldn’t change a thing.
The Mganga was right about something else. My life was too busy, too cluttered, too filled with noise for me to hear the sounds I really craved, true communication with nature. But it would be a while before I would be able to silence the chatter.
28
Once back from Africa, Zamba was once again a regular on the studio lots, and the successful release of The Lion only increased his fame. He worked steadily and consistently in commercials, movies, and television. For instance, Zamba was the lion in all the Tarzan films after Johnny Weismuller stopped doing them—the Tarzans kept changing, but the lion was the same!
His next major star turn was as Fluffy in the movie of the same name, with Tony Randall and Shirley Jones. Shirley had won a well-deserved Oscar for her role in Elmer Gantry a few years before, and proved an absolute treat to work with. She and Zamba had a very special relationship, and one that continued long after filming.
My own career was at a peak. I’d spent twelve years struggling to get to the top, and I finally felt that I’d made it. We were doing a lot of lucrative, high-profile work. It was 1966. I had just completed shooting Gentle Ben, as well as the television show The Greatest Show on Earth, with Jack Palance, in which Zamba featured prominently. The television show Daktari was being filmed at our ranch. We had fifteen hundred wild animals there, and a crew of dedicated keepers and trainers.
The ranch was beautiful. Nestled at the bottom of Soledad Canyon, about thirty miles north of Los Angeles, the property snaked for a mile down the canyon beside the banks of the Santa Clarita stream. The highway wound above it on one side, the railroad track on the other.
Zamba, like many of our animals, made regular appearances on Daktari. Judy the chimp had more regular hours than an accountant, and her own director’s chair. Filming went on for four years, and by the end of it, the assistant directors had forgotten that she wasn’t a human actor. “Judy, you’re up in five,” they’d say.
It seemed that all my hard work had paid off. I was comfortable financially, for the first time in my life. My affection-based system for working with animals dominated the industry—finally, cruelty was no longer the norm. I had a beautiful wife and a terrific daughter. My life seemed to be running without a hitch, and I finally felt as if I could stop and take a breather.
Then, at the beginning of the year, the rain started. And it wouldn’t stop. It rained for weeks—sometimes heavily, with thunder and lightning, and sometimes just a mist of light rain. But it was always there, and over the course of a month or two, the blankets, the beds, and the whole house were constantly damp.
We’d had heavy rains before, and even a few floods, but nothing we couldn’t handle. There was a flood-control dam above us, fifteen miles up the canyon, and we weren’t too worried about the stream overflowing. Just to make sure, we had asked the city’s flood control office for advice when we moved in. They checked their records for the biggest flood in a hundred-year history, and calculated that to handle one that size we would need a channel one hundred feet wide, twelve feet deep, and one mile long. It cost us one hundred thousand dollars and three months of hard work, bu
t we built it. It was worth it to feel safe.
One day during the endless rain, Toni, Zamba, and I were doing our morning rounds to make sure our animals were dry and safe. Toni went over to check on the “wild string,” a group of lions, tigers, bears, and leopards that had been donated to us by people who never should have had them in the first place. Although we knew that very few spoiled mature animals could ever be indoctrinated with affection training, we had taken them in—hopeless animal lovers can be suckers.
I checked at the office for messages, then Zamba and I headed for “Beverly Hills,” our nickname for the area where our movie-star animals lived—Gentle Ben, Clarence the cross-eyed lion, Judy the chimp, Bullfrog the “talking” buffalo, Modoc the elephant, and many others.
The rain had become a steady downpour by the time we were finished there, and Zamba’s mane was getting soaked, which he hated. It was at the rhino enclosure that I began to worry a little, when I noticed that I could no longer jump over the stream that ran beside their barn.
The sky was now opening up with a vengeance. I threw my poncho over Zamba, tied it around his neck to keep the rain out, and continued my tour of inspection. I wanted to finish up as quickly as I could, then find some shelter.
I was just wondering how Toni was making out with the wild string when my head trainer, Frank Lamping, arrived. He told me that the earthen dam above us was about to go. To prevent the dam from bursting, the flood control people were opening the floodgates to release the pressure. We were to watch out for some heavy water coming downstream.
The inspection took on urgency, and word went out to the crew to redouble our efforts. Anything that needed to be done to make the ranch safe needed to be done now. I told Frank to check the stock area, and a trainer yelled from the roadway above that he had the nursery section under control.
I used a small cord that I found near the barn to tie Zamba to a small tree.
“Just for a little while,” I told him.
He didn’t like to be tethered, but I felt I could move faster if I was sure he was staying in one place. The rain was beginning to erode the supports underneath the elephant barn, so I set to digging a channel to divert the flow of water away from the barn.
I was working hard, looking down at my shovel, when I heard a low roar, coming louder and closer. Startled, I looked behind me, and suddenly there it was—a solid wall of water. To this day, I have never seen anything like it. It must have been thirty feet high, and it was carrying with it a frightening amount of debris, including full-sized oak trees and a couple of sheds.
That was all the warning I got before I saw it hit. Down it came, crashing and exploding against the compound, uprooting cages, overturning buildings and trucks—anything in its way. Fortunately, Zamba and I were on high ground, just above the spot the tidal wave hit, or we would unquestionably have been swept away.
Instantly, everything was in chaos. Sheer panic broke out among the animals in the Beverly Hills section. Lions were roaring and hitting against the sides of their cages; bears were lunging against the bars; chimps were screaming. The water was starting to rock the cages. Some were already floating and were about to be swept downstream.
I could hardly believe my eyes, but there wasn’t time for calculation. It was impossible to determine where my efforts would do the most good. I raced for the cages, but was thrown down by the weight of the water, which was all the way up to my chest. Miguel, one of our dedicated keepers, came running over to help, yelling half in English and half in Spanish. I told him to grab a large coil of rope that was hanging in a tree nearby, and to hold one end. I fastened the other end around myself and started out into the filthy, freezing water. If I could just get to the cages, I could unlock the doors and set the animals free. At least then they could fend for themselves—it was their only chance. Otherwise they’d all drown, trapped in their cages.
The water was rushing past me furiously. I struggled through it to Gentle Ben’s cage, fumbling on my ring for the key. “For Chris-sake, don’t drop it!” I pleaded with myself. With shaking hands, I got the key turned in the lock, and threw open the door.
The great old bear landed right on top of me in his panicked race for freedom. There was nothing to do but to grab his heavy coat and hang on, as his massive body carried me over to a group of cages holding more than twenty animals. The water was now five or six feet deep. Cages were starting to come loose from their foundations; the animals were swimming inside them, fighting for breath.
I let go of Ben and grabbed on to the steel bars of one of the cages. My heart sank as I saw Ben dog-paddling, trying unsuccessfully to reach the embankment. I could just barely make out his form as he was carried through some rough white water and around a bend before he was lost from my view.
But there was no time, no time. One by one I released the animals—leopards, tigers, bears—talking as calmly as I could, even managing an occasional pat or kiss of farewell. It was a testament to their training that they trusted me enough to jump into the freezing, filthy water, and I watched, sick and helpless, as they were carried away, swept along with the torrent of water. Some would come together for a moment only to be whisked away again, as though a giant hand shoved them. Some went under. I strained to see whether any of them came up again, but it was impossible to tell.
My wonderful, beloved animals were fighting for their lives.
Word came down to me that Toni and Tana were all right, and Toni had joined the rescue efforts. With my human family safe, I was free to focus again on the animals. To my right, about thirty feet out in the water and half submerged, was a large, heavy steel cage on wheels with a row of four compartments in it. I managed to get to it just as the force of the current started to move it. I began to open the compartments, one by one, but the cage began to move faster downstream, carrying me with it. I looked back to the shore at Miguel. He saw the problem and threw his end of the rope around a large tree branch. We were running out of time. If the rope came to the end of its slack before I could get it off me and onto the cage, we would lose the cage. It was picking up speed, and the animals inside were roaring and barking in terror. I decided to hold the cage myself, with the rope tied around my waist.
There were two beautiful wolves in the last cage, Sheba and Rona. Toni and I had raised them since they were pups. I was at their door, fumbling with the lock, when the rope locked taut around me. I thought it would cut me in half. I grabbed the steel bars with both hands, leaving the key in the lock, praying it wouldn’t drop out. But when I reached down once more to open the lock, a rush of water knocked the key out of the lock and into the torrent.
I was completely stunned. I knew I had just signed those animals’ death warrants. The water behind the cage was building up, pushing against it with a wall of incredible force. I held on as tightly as I could for as long as I could, but eventually the cage was ripped out of my hands.
I fell backward into the churning water, and when I surfaced, I could see the cage out in the main stream, racing with the trees, bushes, and building debris, heading on down the raging river. Sheba and Rona seemed almost calm. My tears joined the flood as my beloved friends were washed away.
By this time, it had become clear to me what had happened. The floodgates on the dam had been opened, all right, but because the ground was already saturated with the thirty inches of rain that had fallen in the last few weeks, it couldn’t absorb any more. And the new storm had hit at the same time, dumping another fourteen inches on us in twenty-four hours. Together, these conditions had caused this horrendous flood.
I would find out later that it was the largest flood that had been recorded in that area—ever. We were really hard hit, because the water had been held up occasionally on its fifteen-mile journey down the canyon by debris in its path. This allowed huge amounts of water to fill up behind the logjams, doubling the force of the flood when released. By the time the water reached us, huge waves had built up; the water and debris came crashing d
own on us like a tidal wave, then subsided, only to come crashing down again, over and over.
We were to struggle through two days and nights of unbelievable havoc and terror, trying desperately to salvage what we could of the ranch.
I scrambled my way to the embankment, concerned for Zamba. I saw a high and dry area that the river had not yet reached. I grabbed his lead and we started to cross over, but were immediately carried downstream by the current and pulled into a whirlpool. I grabbed Zamba’s mane, and together we swam for the safety of the shore. After resting a bit, I managed to get back to the main area, high above the flood line, leaving him in as good a spot as any. At least for the moment, he was safe. I tied him up with the small cord.
“Stay here, Zamba.”
He gave a moan, and it was clear that he wanted to go with me, but he was better off keeping to the high ground.
The storm grew worse. Heavy sheets of rain filled and overflowed our flood channel, undermining its sides until they caved in. By midmorning the Santa Clarita River had become a raging, murderous torrent, a hundred fifty feet wide and fifteen feet deep, moving through Africa U.S.A. with the speed and force of an express train. In its fury it wiped out a two-lane highway, full-grown oak trees, generator buildings—everything. Our soundstage was in a full-sized building, one hundred feet long by fifty feet wide, but the water just picked it up like a matchbox and carried it away downstream, end over end, rolling it like a toy and depositing it on a sand embankment a mile away. Electric wires flared brightly as the water hit them. We rushed for the main switch to the soundstage, shutting everything down in the fear that somebody would be electrocuted.
You don’t think at a time like that—you do. My people risked their lives over and over again for the animals. We’d be half drowned and make our way to the shore just long enough to clear our lungs before heading back out into the water.