Published in:
Our Town North on November 1, 2020
Written by By Melissa Wagoner
"I've moved a lot of off-the-wall things," Eric Tremble, owner of the Two Men and a Truck franchise in Beaverton, told Our Town. "But no, we typically do not move live animals of any sort. Mostly we specialize in residential, home-to-home moves or business moves. That's really what we specialize in."
But on Sept. 8, after discovering that wildfires were raging across the state, Tremble put out a public notice offering his services and his trucks to help the affected communities wherever there was a need.
The request he received caught him off guard.
"We got an email one day through one of our community contacts," Tremble began. "We thought it was small cats. Then, as we got more into it, it was moving large cats - really large cats."
The request came from a board member of a little-known, “last hope," nonprofit sanctuary outside of Scotts Mills called the Wildcat Ridge Sanctuary. It was an appeal to help move 14 enormous cats.
"I didn't know they existed honestly," Tremble said of that first interaction.
And he's not the only one, in fact, that anonymity is by design. "That's exactly how we like it," lan Ford, executive assistant, and son of co-founder Cheryl Tuller, said when asked about the sanctuary's reclusive status. "As a true sanctuary, we are not open to the public and we consider ourselves a retirement home for captive-born and exploited animals. Our mission is to provide them with as close to a 'natural environment as possible where they can live out their life in peace and comfort."
Starting unofficially in 1996 with the adoption of a "hybrid bobcat kitten" named Bobo, the Wildcat Ridge Sanctuary currently cares for 50 wild and hybrid cats, two of whom - lions Chobe and Kariba - are on rescue from Joe Exotic. “
It's kind of a long story," Ford said when asked how the sanctuary ended up with the two famous cats, “but the short version is that they were given away by Joe to a gentleman that was at his facility rescuing wolves. From there, they went to Wildlife Waystation where they got the medical attention they needed. That facility didn't have the room to give the girls the space they needed so we were contacted and immediately said we would love to help. Watch the Animal Planet special Surviving Joe Exotic for additional details."
Under normal circumstances, caring for so many large animals is a big job. "Our property is roughly 80 acres and we try to make sure that the enclosures are much larger than required by law to ensure that our residents have room to relax," Ford stated. "Our keepers spend about four hours every morning preparing individual diets for all of the residents," he added.
But add a wildfire to the mix and the job gets incredibly complicated.
"The morning of Sept. 8th is when we got the evacuation order," Ford recalled. Having had some inkling of the state of things to come, the sanctuary's team was already hard at work, gathering crates, rounding up the smaller cats, and loading them onto a transport trailer and into every vehicle they had access to.
14 big cats transported out of fire evacuation zone
"I was on my way to the sanctuary from Sherwood and arrived in time to help drive one of the larger vehicles to a volunteer's property near Molalla," Ford said of the animals' initial removal.
"After unloading the first batch, we all went back to the property along with several volunteers that had reached out and loaded up all the rest of the smaller residents. We had probably 15 cars/trucks and they were all packed with crates and carriers."
Then, when the fire began to shift again, this time threatening the animals' temporary home in Molalla, yet another evacuation became necessary. With volunteers loading carriers into vehicles all over again. Twice.
Finally, after one very long day, the cats came to rest on a large farm in McMinnville, far enough from the danger of fire. But even then, they knew they couldn't keep them there for the duration - especially not the largest ones.
"The bigs arrived in McMinnville on Wednesday evening, (Sept. 9]," Ford recalled. “Everyone was in a crate and/or a transport container, which isn't something that they can just stay in for a lengthy period of time. Though we had space at the farm, we didn't really have adequate resources to take care of the big guys.
"Fortunately, we have a great relationship with the folks down at Wildlife Safari in Winston and they reached out to let us know that they could house and care for our tigers, lions, cheetahs, and cougars while we were evacuated. We just had to get them down there..."
That is where Tremble, two transport trucks, and one brand-new employee stepped in to help.
"I was like, 'Are you scared of big cats - like lions and tigers?" Tremble laughingly recalled that initial conversation with his new hire. "That was his introduction on the first day."
And the day turned into a busy one, beginning with the loading and transportation of two lions, five tigers, two cheetahs and five cougars to Winston-three onsite in a shipping container should the hours away.
"You're within inches of the animals," Tremble acknowledged. Adding that while some of them appeared to be quite docile - a white Bengal tiger named Nora among them - others were obviously less than happy about the move.
"It's not the same as when you're in the zoo or anything," Tremble described. "I have some recordings of the noises cheetahs make - you don't hear that every day. One cheetah, her name was Ariel, she scared the (S##!) out of me a few times when I walked between her cage and the other cages. She just wasn't too happy."
Which is understandable for animals who are not used to being confined.
"As part of the evacuation process and the pop-up sanctuary' we put together, we had to purchase about 50 large dog kennels so that the littles didn't have to live in a transport carrier for weeks on end," Ford said.
Those purchases will be part of a new emergency kit kept onsite in a shipping container should the need to evacuate arise once again.
"Our location means that we're potentially always going to at least have some risk for a fire," Ford admitted. "Should this kind of thing happen again, we can immediately start getting the kennels loaded and have a team of volunteers take them to a rendezvous location to start setting them up while another group can crate and transport the cats. We can also utilize Wildlife Safari for our bigs if necessary."
For now, Ford is just thankful that the Beachie Creek Fire - which he estimates came to within a mile of the sanctuary's land - largely passed them by and that the majority of the animals have already returned home.
"We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and help from our community of staff, volunteers and supporters," Ford said. "Seeing so many people come together and do so much to help our rescues was truly amazing and we will never be able to adequately thank everyone that helped."
