Clinton’s `St. Francis of Assisi’

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At feeding time, the clearing in the woods of Clinton erupts with a beastly roar as the animals explode from their pens in a blur of feathers and fur. Charley McCarthy, a bucket in each hand and sweating freely in the 95-degree heat, booms out a midday greeting as he trudges through his rounds.

“Hello, girls,” he shouts to a flock of chickens that cluck and flutter around his feet.

A rooster crows above the din and a pair of geese stretch their necks and hiss their displeasure around the fenced-in yard. A young bull named Oliver bellows as he walks to the end of his thick chain and back again. Hamlet the pig grunts behind the steering wheel of a faded Chevy, while a mongrel named Mickey sits rigidly in the back seat like a statue of a dog.

At night, the car is McCarthy’s bedroom. In the day, it is shade for several dogs who lie beneath it.

Out in the pasture, two horses lift their heads from the grass and watch the excitement. “Hey, Buddy!…Whiskey!,” McCarthy shouts across a field that sizzles with the sound of summer insects. The horses — one white and one brown — swish their tails and lope over to nuzzle McCarthy.

“Lookin’ good, babe,” he says, scratching Buddy’s nose.

At last count, McCarthy’s menagerie included 45 dogs, 14 cats, a pony, a bull, two horses, four geese, 28 chickens, 25 chicks, three roosters, two ducks, six ducklings, an assortment of rabbits and the one small pig.

Many of the animals are old, grizzled and close to death. Before they came to McCarthy’s shelter in the woods, they had been cast aside by people who either could not care for them anymore or didn’t want to.

Now they are McCarthy’s whole world and perhaps his salvation.

“You realize how many dogs and cats die because they are not wanted anymore?” McCarthy asks, sitting on a worn-out chair under a tree. “They deserve to live, too.”

McCarthy, a bearded, heavy-set man of 53, never planned to live alone in the woods, caring for the unwanted animals of the world. He never thought he’d wind up sleeping in a car for six years, sitting upright with his chin on his chest as the winter winds howled outside.

In Late March, he suffered a stroke in that car one night. It weakened him greatly, he says, but 10 days later he was back in the woods with his animals. It’s an odd life, he admits, but it’s the only one he’s got.

“I’m not the kind of person who goes on crusades or anything,” he says. “But I started this, and I stick with something if I think it’s right. I know this is right, and I want to die doing it.”

In Roxbury, Mass., where he was born into a “low-income or no-income” family, he once was a taxi driver on his way to owning his own cab. He would drive with his dog, Pal, on the seat beside him. The fares — those who didn’t mind riding with a dog — would sometimes swap pet stories with McCarthy. The dog lovers often tipped Pal, adding handsomely to the night’s take.

Later, as a security investigator for a car-rental agency at Logan Airport in Boston, McCarthy wore a suit and tie and earned a good living for a while.

“I made big money, enough to buy the cab I wanted,” he says after taking a swig from a liter bottle of diet soda. “But I had six dogs by then, and they needed me more than the cab did.”

In 1979, while living in Hyde Park, Mass., he quit his cabbie dreams and devoted his life to caring for strays. He bought a piece of land and converted two small buildings into kennels for the dogs. McCarthy, who drank heavily in those days, slept in his car.

People came from all over to give him their pets. At one point, with 117 dogs and little money, he began asking for donations. Animal lovers contributed small sums, which McCarthy used to feed himself and his dogs, and to find them homes through newspaper ads. He still depends on his benefactors, who send him checks and help him with his occasional fund-raisers in Massachusetts.

The SPCA in Massachusetts once accused him of beating one of his animals — a two-legged dog. He told the judge that he sometimes yelled at his dogs — he had only 25 at the time — but he swore he never beat them. The Boston newspapers and TV stations played up the eccentric nature of the dogman’s life. The Weekly World News, the supermarket tabloid, ran a picture of the two-legged dog in a wheelchair that McCarthy had bought.

“It was like living in a goldfish bowl,” he says.

The abuse charge was never proved, but the judge decided that Hyde Park could, nevertheless, do without the strays. McCarthy took his animals to California, and hauled them back to a Massachusetts kennel when his mother died. McCarthy was broke, so he worked at the kennel and slept on the floor.

In 1985, he decided to move to Maine, where his family had lived briefly 42 years ago. He leased 17 acres of land in Clinton and rounded up a few friends to help him move. At 10 on a September night, McCarthy’s caravan of five vehicles, an old blue trailer, and an 18-wheeled truck rumbled up the dirt road. By morning, the clearing was filled with 45 dogs, two horses, and a pony.

McCarthy started building immediately. A 12-year-old boy wandered in one day, liked what he saw, and brought his father along to help. A kennel and chicken-wire fences went up quickly to beat the snow.

McCarthy says he hasn’t been drunk in almost seven years. His responsibilities won’t allow it.

“I was sober enough one night to know that my dog was dying, and that’s important,” he says. “I have to take care of my animals. I have too much to lose. It may not look like it, but I’ve got more now than I ever had.”

The people of this farming community have never been sure what to make of their odd neighbor. McCarthy has heard the rumors: that his dogs are diseased; that he came to town to go on welfare.

“Even today, people look at me like I’m dirty, which I am,” he says. “But I only got four pairs of pants and one pair of boots. They don’t know that. I’m considerate, though. When I go to a restaurant, I try to pick one that isn’t crowded.”

McCarthy’s few local friends, though, are remarkably dedicated. Lauris Monk, a retired farmer who lives at the end of the road, helped McCarthy build his kennels and cared for his animals while he was recuperating from the stroke. Monk is honest when asked if he has ever met anyone like McCarthy.

“In a word, no,” says Monk.

Monk has heard the comments about McCarthy. He says his neighbor’s abrupt city ways may puzzle country people at times. Monk doesn’t mind; McCarthy has done what he said he would do when he came here, and that’s all that matters.

“Wouldn’t you help someone who you consider to be a neighbor and a friend?” Monk asks as he sets a plumb line for the dog pen.

McCarthy is always in debt to the local vet, who neuters the dogs and supplies worm medicine and antibiotics by the quart. In the leanest times, Hemphill’s Feed and Grain in Vassalboro has given McCarthy grain on credit. Lawrence Keddy, who runs a humane society in Gardiner, has sent more than a truckload of free cat and dog food, and has bought McCarthy much of the clothing he wears each day.

“He got me some pajamas once, but I got no use for pajamas. I don’t have a bedroom,” McCarthy says. “These people who help me have to have an awful lot of faith in me. I’m not crazy to them.”

McCarthy types up a monthly newsletter and sends copies to more than 200 of his supporters in Maine and Massachusetts. The newsletter is chatty and talks about the animals by name. In the newsletter, for instance, people learned that old Fred had eaten the insides out of his fifth car, this time the powder-blue Futura.

Recently they have been reading about McCarthy’s plan to walk from Saugus, Mass., to Clinton on Aug. 4, in order to raise money for his animals. McCarthy intends to walk 15 miles a day for two weeks. Brad Dyer, a young friend from Waterville, will drive alongside him in a van. Outside the van will be a banner that says “Brad and Charley’s Walk of Love.” Inside will be McCarthy’s medical supplies.

“To be honest, I have enough trouble walking around here,” he says. “But if I keel over on the walk, I just hope there’ll be someone to take my place.”

In October, when McCarthy holds his annual blessing of the animals, he hopes to have a new pond for the ducks, a corral for the horses, and a life-sized statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.

“People have met me and said there are similarities to St. Francis, but that scares me,” McCarthy says. “I see my imperfections too clearly. But that statue belongs here somehow, just like shoes belong on your feet. I just wish I had these insights when I was younger. Then I’d be done by now.”