ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 16, 1996 TAG: 9609160075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: S.D. HARRINGTON STAFF WRITER
FROM FAINTING GOATS TO IGUANAS, bidders had their pick of the litter of any number of "unique pets."
Jimmy Saunders and his two young neighbors were a little skeptical Sunday as they looked over the Tennessee fainting goats to be auctioned off later that day.
"They say if you clap your hands they'll faint," Saunders said, nodding in the direction of the goats, which look somewhat like miniature mountain goats.
Twelve-year-old Dustin Bobbitt clapped his hands three times rapidly at the goats, which were bunched together in a wooden pen and numbered by a marker on a patch of duct tape stuck to their tail ends.
"Well, they ain't fell over yet," Dustin said.
He actually needed to scare the goats to get them to faint, said Robin Conlon, who bought two of the goats that day.
Conlon had been reading books on fainting goats. She and her husband, Tom, live on several acres of land in Appomattox, and they'd like to start a small farm with them.
"They're unique pets," she said.
And, yes, they do faint.
"If you scare them enough, they'll faint," Conlon said, although she said it's not good for them.
Exotic animal breeder Bob Pauley put his personal property up for auction Sunday at Fantasy Land, his small zoo in Bedford County with about a dozen species of exotic fowl and other small exotic animals.
Pauley auctioned his Hobby Horse Farm and Fantasy Land in 1995 to settle a divorce. But he bought back Fantasy Land, his house and his 10 miniature horses. At the 1995 auction, he said he would try to reopen Fantasy Land.
But Sunday, Pauley didn't want to talk about his business.
"I don't have a story," he said.
Behind Fantasy Land's replica facade of a Western town lie dozens of pens and cages housing everything from African ostriches to dwarf rabbits.
Fantasy Land was once a fun place for young kids to visit.
Ten-year-old Pamela Ferris, who was at the auction with her mom, remembers visiting the park three years ago with her second-grade class. They stayed for six hours.
Now, weeds have taken over a tunnel once used for a rubber-tired train that rode around the animal cages.
"It was an ideal place to bring children," said John Martin, who remembers taking his granddaughter there years ago.
The auction drew all sorts of collectors - of antiques, junk cars and exotic animals.
On the auction block was a 1938 Ford coupe with a black finish and a purring engine. Then there were other cars, including a dilapidated 1951 convertible complete with rust and a garden spider that had spun a web between the engine block and the radiator. Pauley didn't get a good enough offer on any of the cars, so he didn't sell them.
But most of the other items, including many of the animals, were being sold absolute, meaning they would be sold no matter how low the highest bid was.
L.D. English bought three peacocks at $40 each. He has a chicken farm near New London and says he'll keep the exotic birds as pets there.
"You can feed them cracked corn," he said.
Fourteen-year-old Clifford Smith II was hoping to buy a de-scented skunk he saw advertised in the newspaper.
But a game warden confiscated the animal Saturday, refusing to let Pauley sell it because it was considered a wild animal, said auctioneer Calvin Willard.
"I didn't think it would go for over $50, because I didn't think that anyone else would want it," Smith said. He used to have a pet iguana and has wanted a pet skunk since he was about8.
Clifford Smith Sr. tried to make up for his son's disappointment. He bid on a wallaby, or miniature kangaroo, and stayed in the bidding up to $155. Then he backed out.
Louise Toller bought the male wallaby for $160. But that was a steal. Toller already had three female wallabies, and she said they can cost as much as $1,500 each.
Toller owns other exotic pets on several acres of land in Lynch Station. She and her husband, John, have llamas, sheep and goats.
Wallabies are not the easiest pets to tame, she said.
"You can't just run up and love them," she said. But she said they love apples and sweet potatoes, and if you hold one out to them they'll run up to you and take it.
Toller hadn't thought of a name for her new wallaby. But after a second, she thought of something.
"I might just name him Bob after the guy who owned him."
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. Fallow deer romp around theirby CNBfenced-in yard at Fantasy Land on Sunday before being sold to the
highest bidder. color. 2. Keegan Warner, 13, pets a Tennessee
fainting goat at Fantasy Land in Bedford County.