Jeff’s Exotic Animal Ventures

After losing Priscilla and Carmel, pets par excellence, most of my association with animals was vicarious through my son Jeff, who had a small ranch in Snowmass Creek outside Aspen.

Jeff collected exotic animals. The price curve on most exotic animals is the same—a perfect bell. The animals start off low, and then become "the thing to buy." Prices rise rather rapidly. Eventually everyone who wants one has one and the prices start back down again.

Picnicking with Llamas in Colorado

I loved the idea of hiking and camping in the mountains but hated carrying a heavy pack. I'd seen pictures of people camping with llamas and encouraged Jeff to start a herd. I financed the business, and Jeff bought some good llamas and started competing in shows. Similar to a dog show, the llamas were judged for confirmation and the quality of their wool.

At the height of the market, an outstanding llama could cost from $30,000 to $50,000. We had some pretty good ones, doing well on paper, until the bubble burst, prices went down, and Jeff sold his herd except for a few favorites for packing.

We could go camping for several days with the llamas carrying everything but our daypacks. An elegant llama picnic was inviting a dozen or so friends to hike to a remote location where we had wine, cheese, and other culinary delights. The llamas themselves were quite the entertainment. If you held a treat in your mouth, the llama would take it, in effect giving you a big kiss. 

With their very soft feet, llamas are sure-footed on the trail, and, when well trained, are easy to lead. It is said that leading a well-trained llama is like leading a balloon. There are few limitations. A llama can go anywhere a man can go without using his hands.

People worry about llamas spitting, and they do when angry or fighting over a female, but I have spent hundreds of hours with them and never been spit on once.

To supplement the packing rental income, Jeff taught a team to pull a buggy and sold llama rides around downtown Aspen. In winter, his llamas wore little barium-studded booties, designed by Jeff, to give them traction on the icy streets. Imagine the elegant Llama, head held high, pulling a buggy in his fancy booties.

Wallabies at Colorado Cocktail Parties

After llamas, Jeff decided to raise wallabies—a type of miniature kangaroo. A newborn wallaby is about the size of a bee and lives in its mother's pouch for three to four months.

As the wallaby begins to peek out and occasionally leave the pouch, it can be taken from its mother and raised by hand. This isn't easy, because at first you have to feed it every couple hours night and day, but hand-raised this way a wallaby will become a wonderful pet.

Jeff raised one named Hannah. I would take her to cocktail parties where she was always a huge hit, hopping around on the floor and then back into the sack that served as her pouch.

There was something wrong with the soil conditions on the ranch; adult wallabies did fine and bred easily, but as soon as the babies started getting on the ground they would die. Jeff eventually had to dispose of the entire herd. 

Reindeer and Movies

Jeff's last venture into exotics was reindeer. Literally thousands of reindeer inhabit Alaska but importing them was difficult because they had to be quarantined when they came through Canada (a long, difficult, expensive process).

Jeff solved this problem by chartering a DC6 to fly them directly from Alaska to Aspen. Talk about a rodeo—you haven't seen one until you've seen the unloading of wild-eyed reindeer off a DC6 onto the truck to take them out to the ranch.

It was tumultuous! Reindeer going every direction, much like herding cats. One escaped from the airport during an unloading. There were unconfirmed reports of sightings for a couple of years, but he was never recaptured. Unfortunately, reindeer can't live in the wild in Colorado. The lichen that grows in Alaska is an essential part of their diet. A loose reindeer would eventually die, and this one either succumbed to its diet or predators.

Supplementing the herd’s feed with certain vitamins solved this problem for Jeff’s herd.

Jeff would sell the reindeer to people who wanted to keep them as pets. He also had a prosperous business renting reindeer to various zoos at Christmastime. It's incredible that zoos didn't have reindeer. After all, they are a native animal, but some zoos wanted just Christmas exhibitions.

Reindeer were hauled as far away as Florida. Jeff also dressed up as Santa Claus and went to private parties and shopping malls during the Christmas season. He trained a team of six to pull a sleigh. It was great fun to take the kids sleigh-riding around the ranch.

Jeff provided reindeer for movies. He rented the sleigh team to Rob Reiner for a Castle Rock Pictures production. In another movie venture, he took a herd of one hundred up the Castle Creek Valley for several days to film scenes for a Disney movie, White Fang 2.

Imagine one hundred reindeer with their antler racks and their high-stepping gait stampeding down a mountain valley! I went up one day to watch the action and witnessed the stampede of one hundred reindeer (stand-ins for caribou). It was quite a thrilling production.

Eventually, Jeff developed the largest reindeer herd in the lower 48 states—over 200. Prices were starting to fall when he decided to move to Puerto Vallarta and sold the entire herd. He got out just in time. In 2002 various quarantine regulations were implemented to control chronic wasting disease, prominent in some of the elk herds in Colorado. That killed the reindeer market.