Costs Swamp Noah’s Ark Animal Home

LOCUST GROVE, Ga. —  About an hour south of Atlanta, a quiet, unassuming farm is home to orphaned monkeys, injured deer, problem-child parrots--and a dream that is getting out of hand.

For Jama Hedgecoth, dog breeder turned animal trainer turned pet-pig rancher, a lifetime of working with animals has spawned Noah’s Ark, a animal rehabilitation center that doubles as therapy for people who are handicapped, elderly or disadvantaged.

The farm is home to more than 300 animals, from a bouncing golden retriever to two Indochinese binturongs (imagine a cross between a bear and a seal). There are turkeys, goats, an owl, a silver fox, a bobcat, some exotic birds that bite and squawk too much, a pony named Molly with foot problems and Sierra the cougar, whose features were too mis-sized for a zoo to put her on display.

“She’s not a very good-looking cougar, but I love her,” Hedgecoth said, hugging the big kitten.

The diversity of this menagerie is not the point, the founder of Noah’s Ark said on a warm winter morning on the farm.

“The main thing behind Noah’s Ark isn’t how many animals I can accumulate,” Hedgecoth said. “It’s how many people can I bring in--children, old people, handicapped kids--to relate with them.”

Noah’s Ark takes in just about any animal that’s hurt or abandoned and lets it heal or gives it a home. Animals come from individuals, county animal control officers, even state game wardens.

If an animal such as a squirrel or a deer can be returned to the wild, Hedgecoth releases it. If it is too hurt or too domesticated, it gets a home in her state-licensed rehab center.

This is not, she insists, going to be one of those well-meaning no-kill dog and cat shelters that takes unwanted pets.

While she will take dogs and cats, if they are strays, she tries to get them quickly into new homes.

“If they’ve just had a litter of puppies they want to get rid of, I’m sorry; I can’t take care of their mistakes,” she said. “I’ll help you place them, but I’ve got too much else to do.”

That includes caring for 300 animals with only the help of volunteer relatives. It includes taking classes of handicapped kids through the farm, or taking a vanload of critters to cheer up folks in a nursing home.

“To see the handicapped kids playing with the ponies, I just sit and cry,” she said. “It’s makes it special.”

Hedgecoth’s dream includes a “care home” somewhere on her 120 acres, where abused and abandoned kids could grow up, and the elderly could grow old, with love and dignity.

But that part of the dream looks a long way off right now. In real life, dreamers had better have some money.

Hedgecoth says that it costs about $6,000 a month to buy enough food, supplies and medical care to keep Noah’s Ark afloat. The farm takes donations from visitors, and she is trying to learn the ways of big-time fund raising.

But the donations are only covering about half of Noah’s Ark’s expenses.

And while Hedgecoth makes money supplying animals for TV productions and selling miniature pet pigs, and her husband, Charlie, works at a trucking company, it’s not enough to support a farm, a family, a occasional foster child and a zoo.

“I’m about to sink,” she said.

Hedgecoth and her family scour the dumping bins behind grocery stores, looking for produce to feed the animals. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff they throw away,” she said with a sigh.

Volunteer friends even carry zip-up bags in their cars, picking up “road kills” that make dinner for the luckier creatures back on the farm.

And still the animals come.

“I’ve never met anybody quite as crazy as I am,” Hedgecoth admits. “I guess most people have more sense than I do. They know there’s a cutoff point. You can’t save the world.

“But I can do my little-bitty part.”