Air Sic

Shipping motivated by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association's Species Survival Plan Program is low-volume. Houston Zoo staffers have received koalas, they've sent an elephant to Germany, and two male cheetahs were recently flown to Hawaii to breed. A Mexican wolf, flown in a jumbo-size dog-type crate, was sent to New Mexico for release. Still, when it comes to animal shipping, the zoo has nothing on the rodeo.

In addition to the open breeding show cattle, and the various market animal sales, and the horse sale, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo livestock manager Wes Allison believes that close to a million dollars' worth of sales are done in the barn, people just making the deal right there, owner to owner. Allison says, "A large majority go to Mexico and Central and South America. They also fly to England or France or wherever it might be that we send those critters off to."

The rodeo office helps people put paperwork in order, advising about quarantines and the regulations for various countries.

Right now, of course, BSE and hoof-and-mouth are serious travel issues for horse and cattle dealers. If, for instance, a girl is lucky enough to enjoy a horseback trek through the mountains of Italy, she'll have to spend an extra 15 minutes having her boots disinfected on her return to the States. The logistics of shipping hoofed animals are formidable.

Even in times without disease outbreaks, shipping animals, both nationally and internationally, requires reams of paperwork to clear the way through a half-dozen agencies.

If you are shipping animals, you might want to talk to Tom Schooler. Since 1984 his animal station at Bush Intercontinental Airport, Animal-Port Houston, has been heading 'em up and moving 'em out. Schooler says the future is live animal products such as embryos, semen and eggs. He handles that and just about anything that walks, flaps wings or swims. "We don't do adult giraffes; there's just no way. We'll do immature giraffes, because their necks will fit."

In the midst of preparing a boatload of cattle for a sea shipment to South America and a planeload of dairy cattle, pregnant heifers, for Vietnam, Schooler talked about the real difficulties in animal transports: bureaucracy and bullshit, or apeshit, or crates carpeted with penguin guano.

He moves about 100,000 animals a year (a box of mice counts as an animal), and the hardest part is preparing a protocol. "Paperwork begins with the very first thought of shipping something," Schooler says. A shipping protocol might cover 200 points, detailing the arrangements for every step of the move and contingency plans for political, weather or other sudden changes.

When ten rhinos arrive in Houston, there are 40 people to meet them: various inspectors, vets and handlers who do horn-to-tail examinations, tests and cleaning. USDA guidelines require that all the rhino manure be incinerated. Boy Scouts, bless their badge-earning hearts, sometimes volunteer for shovel duty.

In handling the containment needs of animals ranging from baby vultures to giant silverback gorillas, Schooler feels it's "generally not acceptable to give animals sedatives."

When a critter finds itself in this strange new environment, Schooler believes, "The reaction is more of 'I'm gonna stand here and see what happens' instead of an agitated reaction…."

Agitation can often be the reaction of airline employees to more exotic animals -- especially snakes. The bias is not because they're scary; it's because they really know how to hide. Brett Nichols, a sales manager for Air France in Houston, once worked for Piedmont Airlines dealing with summer camp charters.

"We had 150 screaming kids from Camp Wananoga-whatever," he recalls. "And some kid comes up and says, 'I lost my snake.' 'What kind was it?' 'I dunno.' "

The crew had to land, evacuate and ground the plane for two days. A search party finally caught up with the critter in the a/c, alive and nonvenomous.