Wednesday, June 8,1983/The Battalion/Page 7
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Christmas present starts
Lufkin zoo tradition
I United Press International
LUFKIN — Three days be-
)ntrol. Atore Christmas 1965, industrial
ized, jt Walter Trout received an un-
ntical in pt jsual Christmas gift at his office
>rogranub(owntown — a hippopotamus,
i takes uJ Because he had no place to
lemorytlitlep the 500-pound baby beast,
interprets! "rout and his friends developed
:omputer jzoo around it. At least that’s
lium, this!® shorthand way Gordon
orthpartkjenley, current director of the
helped tk-lien Trout Zoo, tells it.
jpularity J|‘A lot of this is tied up in
omputer ;gend. There’s no docurnen-
■evidence on a lot of it,” Hen-
tome comply said.
kessometci.Actually, Trout, president of
quite diliufkin Industries Inc., had been
ic languagtimpaigning for a zoo in the
tost home arlv 1960s, telling friends it
ver, withlfould be a good thing for chil-
npie home |reii to see exotic animals and
can petiB wildlife up close,
trol funeipThe nearest zoos were in Bal
tic only onaMand Houston, each more
ase comp tan 100 miles away.
;andconthBie tried to involve various
daritffiens,” Henley said. “Word
one examt taked out. A friend told him he
iilableomras going to donate a small
tuters. ninial to the zoo.”
I Trout had forgotten about
■ promise from C.B. Went
worth of Philadelphia, a fellow
member of the Texas Utilities
board of directors, by the time
the gift hippo arrived by van.
Friends described Trout as
speechless.
After a few days in Lufkin,
“Hippy,” as the hippo came to be
named, was sent to Monroe, La.,
for two years while Trout and
friends of the city of Lufkin put
together their zoo.
The zoo, named the Ellen
Trout Zoo for Trout’s mother,
opened on June 17, 1967. By
that time, the hippo weighed
2,000 pounds.
“Of course, with the publicity
generated by the hippo, there
were a lot of exotic animals
brought in. I believe there were
about 100 animals altogether
when the zoo opened,” Henley
said.
Now Hippy weighs more than
4,000 pounds, and the zoo has
grown around the hippopota
mus’ cage and pool, where Hip
py tends to float back and forth
to keep an eye on visitors.
Today, the zoo on the north
side of Lufkin occupies 13 acres,
houses 414 animals of 177 spe
cies and attracts more than
150,000 people a year.
Henley said it is not unusual
for a zoo the size of the Ellen
Trout to have a hippo —
“They’re easy to keep” — and he
said they have several unusual
animals, including suni antelope
and worm-like animals called
caecelians.
They also have apes, big cats
and peacocks.
The zoo would like to have a
giraffe, some zebras, a few small
mammals and primates they
don’t have. But they’re not cam
paigning for gorillas or
elephants, which require expen
sive facilities and careful hand
ling.
“Gorillas are very costly for
the facility and at present we
wouldn’t want to tackle anything
like that,” said Henley, who
came to Lufkin from the Tulsa,
Okla. zoo.
“Elephants are iffy. We don’t
have a place to put them. If
somebody came along and don
ated an entire facility and paid
the salary of a trained person to
keep it, we might consider it,” he
said.
Japanese fake food adds
art to ordinary cuisine
United Press International
TOKYO — Spurious
spaghetti, forged fish, sham
ham, pseudo sushi, bogus
burgers, artificial eel — all
confront the diner entering a
restaurant in Japan.
Most newcomers quickly
learn to base their dining
choices on the appeal of the
wax and plastic replicas in re
staurant windows.
Some visitors to Japan at
first think the displays are
genuine — testimony to the
skill and ingenuity of a group
of specialized artisans.
Fake food is big business in
Japan. Industry sources say it
accounted for at least 5 billion
yen ($21.5 million) in profits
last year.
The largest company is
Iwasaki Manufacturing, with
about 40 percent of the
market.
Because authenticity is the
key to success, trade secrets
are closely guarded. Most
firms refuse to let outsiders in
their workshops.
One company, Tokyo
Bien, whose founder appren
ticed at Madame Tussaud’s
London wax museum, has
other factories where simple
forms like pizza crusts, bread
and rice are churned out on
assembly lines.
In the workshop was a dish
of “spaghetti” wound into
place, glued down and co
vered with wax “meat sauce”
or dusted with “parsley.” A
“parfait” was drenched in
“strawberry” or “chocolate”
syrup near a plate of plastic
“sashimi” (sliced raw fish)
pieced painstakingly
together.
Shop foreman Hideo
Ebara said it takes at least six
years to train a worker prop
erly.
Ebara, 40, has worked at
the company since leaving
school 20 years ago. He said
he would not want to do any
thing else.
“Usually factories use
machines and the work is the
same every day. Here every
thing is handmade, and I can
express my ideas through my
work,” he said. “It’s a kind of
art.”
The company’s prices re
flect the long hours of pain
staking work. A large, whole
salmon or tuna might sell for
50,000 to 75,000 yen ($210 to
$315).
Ebara showed how to make
realistic “steak” by pouring
hot gelatin over a real steak
and letting it set for about an
hour. The meat is then peeled
away from the mold. Hot wax
and white and brown paint,
layered with cotton wool for
strength, are used to make the
replica.
Hot wax mixed with red
and yellow paint is poured
from a height into a vat of cold
water, where it congeals
rapidly. Before it hardens, the
wax is molded by hand
around the outside of the
already hard wax shrimp,
which then looks as if it were
just deep-fried in a golden
brown batter.
“We’re learning and im
proving every day,” said
Ebara, adding that real food
“doesn’t look as bright and de
licious as our food.”
Although fake food is a un
iquely Japanese institution,
Ebara said he thinks it origin
ated in the early 1900s with
restaurant owners trying to
familiarize their patrons with
exotic Western cuisine.
Tokyo Biken recently re
ceived several orders from
overseas. Processed food pro
ducers want samples for trade
shows, department stores
want samples to help sell
kitchenware, and novelty
shops want them as specialty
items, he said.
The fake food craftsmen
are also looking for other
markets. Such unlikely items
as hamburger keychains and
strawberry earrings already
are appearing in Tokyo de
partment stores.
One observer even re
ported seeing a buttered pop
corn brooch.
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New clues claimed
in murder case
United Press International
RALEIGH, N.C. — It’s been
13 years since the family of
Green Beret Capt. Jeffrey Mac
Donald was slaughtered in a
Fort Bragg duplex, but an inves
tigator says he is uncovering new
leads in the case;
Ray Shedlick, who is gather
ing evidence for an anticipated
appeal, said Monday a news
paper advertisement seeking in
formation about the deaths has
been successful and he will
place other ads.
MacDonald, although in
jured in the incident, was con
victed of killing his wife and two
young daughters and sentenced
to three life prison sentences.
He currently is in a federal pris
on in Bastrop.
MacDonald has always
claimed his family was killed and
he was wounded by intruders.
An ad was published last
Wednesday in The Fayetteville
Observer and The Fayetteville
Times listing a telephone num
ber and post office box in
Durham that people with infor
mation about the case could use.
The number and address are
that of Baley, Howard and
O’Connell Ltd., a management
consultant security firm with
offices in New York, Chicago
and North Carolina.
Shedlick said the company
was hired by Bryan ONeill, a
MacDonald attorney, to gather
information for an appeal now
being prepared. That appeal
will seek a new trial based on
new evidence in the case.
“This is the first ad we have
placed, but it has been so pro
ductive, believe me, I’m going to
place another one,” Shedlick
said in an interview Monday.
Shedlick said he had received
five calls “four of which were ex
tremely productive and one was
tremenedous.”
Shedlick, who said he was a
former New York City private
detective, said he had been
gathering information on the
MacDonald case since March 1.
“We went back to the area and
beat the bushes, doing the typic
al things I would have done if I
was still with the New York City
Police Department,” he said.
“We banged on doors and shook
the leaves of trees and out of the
trees came the evidence that we
are following up on.”
Doctor says plant
knew of dioxin
United Press International
NEWARK, N.j. — The own
ers of a dioxin-contaminated
chemical firm that once made
Agent Orange knew their work
ers suffered severe skin disease
but were determined to keep
operating, a doctor who treated
the workers says.
“They were aware of what
was going on,” Dr. Roger Brod-
kin, head of dermatology at the
University of Medicine and De
ntistry of New Jersey, said
Monday.
“No one worried much about
the skin disease because every
one was determined to make
production schedules” for the
Vietnam War defoliant, said
Brodkin, who treated up to 50
employees of the Diamond
Alkali Co. during the 1960s.
Brodkin said he alerted pub
lic health officials years ago that
they had a health problem, and,
although they inspected the site,
nothing was done.
The comment came as state
officials said Monday they will
begin their investigation of diox
in contamination in the area in
nearby Edison, at the aban
doned Chemical Insecticide
Corp.
Environmental Commission
er Robert Hughey said officials
would begin to take samples for
dioxin and other hazardous che
micals from the Edison site. He
said owners of nine other sites
will begin taking samples within
10 days.
Federal environmental offi
cials also will expand testing in
Newark to a half-mile radius of
the Diamond site and plan to
take 200 air, water, soil and fish
samples to determine the extent
of contamination.
At Diamond, Brodkin said,
the chemical operators were
willing to tolerate the skin dis
ease, known as chloracne, for
high pay.
“It was rough,” recalled Brod
kin, who made weekly trips to
the plant to treat the workers’
boils, abscesses, pustules and
cysts. “But the money was good,
and they tolerated it,” he said.
“There were so many of them
affected, if they were to send
them out to us, they’d have to
close down a shift. So instead,
they were willing to pay us to
come there.”
Gov. Thomas Kean disclosed
last Thursday that recent soil
tests confirmed dangerous con
centrations of dioxin at the plant
in Newark’s Ironbound neigh
borhood and urged nearby resi
dents to relocate.
Homing pigeon slightly
off course in Malaysia
United Press International
TOKYO — A homing pigeon
that ended up 3,000 miles off
course in the jungles of Malaysia
finally came home via jetliner —
and three months late.
“I never thought that little
bird would still be alive,” said its
owner, Kazuo Hiyama, 52, of
Kurume, Japan. “The pigon
had no name before, and I am
going to name it Malaysia.”
The 2-year-old pigeon was on
a 310-mile race in western Japan
in March but never reached its
destination.
It was found two months later
3,000 miles away in the jungles
of southern Malaysia. A tag on
the pigeon’s leg identified the
owner.
“There have been cases when
our lost pigeons were found in
China or the United States but
never down in Malaysia,” said a
spokesman for the Japan Race
Pigeon Association.
According to pigeon experts,
a race pigeon normally is only
able to fly 600 miles non-stop.
“Malaysia” was believed to have
survived the 3,000-mile trip by
resting on ships or land between
Japan and Malaysia.