Wild-animal haven effective medicine ‘Lost’ Vietnam vet finds life’s purpose

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MOUNT VERNON – Walking in the wooded area behind her western Maine home, Julie Miner hears a loud braying echo off the trees. “Oh, that’s just my husband’s ass,” she says, laughing.

Behind the home the couple built from wood cleared from the land are Bob Miner’s jackass and 191 other animals: Bengal tigers, American mountain lions, Barbados sheep, Indonesian barking deer, North American black bears, Australian kangaroos, dromedaries, peacocks, monkeys, African lions and German elk.

This is no zoo: The Miners are operating a sanctuary and breeding farm. They supply zoos and facilities all over North America with stock of both common and endangered species.

The 42-acre compound hosts educational tours and provides therapy for countless disabled children and adults.

That would be enough of a story, except for the incredible resurrection the animals performed on a once-lost Bob Miner.

Gregarious, outgoing, a jokester, loud and silly. That’s 60-year-old Bob today.

But 23 years ago, he was “a very, very lost man,” according to his own admission.

Bob spent his senior year of high school in Vietnam as a Marine, where he was shot three times.

Returning to Maine, he worked for a short time at Bath Iron Works – didn’t like it – and then trained to be an emergency medical technician. He decided he wanted to be a doctor and re-enlisted, this time in the Air Force.

But Bob was carrying a hidden problem from Vietnam that exploded like the shells that had fallen around him.

The concussion of the bombs had left him with a disability that narrowed the arteries to his head. At 33, he had his first stroke. Two more followed in the next year and a half. And then he had a heart attack.

Bob spent 18 months in a wheelchair; he lost the ability to read and write; he didn’t even know he had a twin sister.

After release from a VA hospital in Washington, “it took me two years to find my way back home. I was lost,” he said. “I became a recluse. I wanted to get away from people.”

But animals – now there was a real healing prescription.

Bob was raised with exotic animals – his parents had monkeys and peacocks – so in his quest for understanding what happened to him, he naturally happened upon animals.

By 1979, Bob was starting to collect animals, beginning with domestic animals such as goats, llamas and sheep. He gradually obtained a state rehabilitator’s license, and game wardens began bringing hurt, wounded or abandoned critters.

“I could put my heart and soul into the animals,” said Bob, who noticed that as he healed the animals, he also was getting better and stronger through the caring.

“When I’m with the animals, I can be wide open,” he said. “They return unconditional love and they don’t need any guarantees.”

Slowly, one person at a time, Bob began allowing people into his farm and into his life. Before he knew it, he was offering educational tours of his facility. “Now the animals are not only a part of my inner world, but I can share them with the outer world,” Bob said.

Julie said she met Bob when she was on a group tour of his animal farm and he asked for volunteers to help with chores. “Six months later we were married,” she said.

“Now I have eight licenses,” joked Bob. “Seven for the animals and one for the marriage.”

It was Julie who first began breeding and selling the exotic, endangered species. “We just took off from there,” said Bob.

Last Friday, Julie was warming bottles of formula to feed a tiny lemur, while a 5-week-old African lion cub padded across the kitchen floor.

When Julie answered the telephone “hello,” it produced an echoing “hello” from exotic birds around the house.

A 19-year old lemur named Mickey Rooney sits on a chair in the den.

Julie’s daughter, Heidi Iverson, 17, said growing up around exotic animals has its ups and downs. “On the positive side, my friends find it really interesting here. And the tours enabled me to grow up around a lot of people.”

“The bad thing is we never get away,” said Iverson, who has had to evict strange animals from her room. One day she discovered a lion ripping down the canopy over her bed. And she goes through five pairs of flip-flops a summer. “They eat them,” she said with a shrug.

Julie said the family now networks with animal experts across the country. When the baby lemur was cast off by its mother, Julie had a ready resource to call to find out just what to feed it (infant formula) and how often (every two hours with an eye dropper.)

There are four rules to follow when dealing with animals, Bob maintained: Don’t mess with their food; don’t mess with their kids; if they are sick, leave them alone; and don’t come between a breeding pair.

“We train them for no claws, no teeth and no jumping,” he said. “We watch them, learn from their behavior. They are telling you something just by their movements.”

But he admits that the couple must be multitalented to deal with the wide variety of animal types. “You have to be a dietitian, a veterinarian, an educator, a mechanic and an engineer,” he said.

Then there’s all that feeding. The Miners serve up 3,000 pounds of meat a week; 2 tons of grain a month; 100 round and 1,400 square bales of hay a year; two cases of bananas, carrots and apples each week.

“This is not our job,” said Julie. “This is our life. We live it 24 hours a day.”

“Our goals now are to enhance the environments for each species,” Bob said. “I don’t want to get bigger. I want to make it better.”

Back outside with his animals, Bob wrestled with a lynx, fed candy to the bear and got down on all fours to ask a 625-pound male African lion for “kisses for daddy.”

“Look at him,” remarked Julie. “You would never know what he went through. These animals literally brought him back to the world.”

As he let a full-grown Bengal tiger suck his fingers, Bob was asked if he was ever afraid of them.

“I’ve been shot three times, had three strokes and a heart attack. If these cats do me in, praise the Lord,” he laughed. “This life is just one unique moment after another.”