We have had one of the best kept secrets in Indiana exposed in our Indianapolis Star Newspaper the week of June 17th: the Exotic Feline Rescue Center.
The founder of this place is Joe Taft. Joe is a fifty-nine year old man who is a college graduate with a degree from the State University of New York at Oswego, in Zoology. He has always loved Big Cats and day dreamed of taking long road trips with a Cheetah sitting in the passenger seat beside him. His first Exotic Feline was an ocelot he acquired at the age of twenty-one, just after graduating from Indiana State University with a degree in Philosophy. He continued keeping big cats even after moving to New Mexico to work as an excavation contractor. Then he saw two abused and abandoned tigers and knew he had to help them and to find a place on which to keep his cats.
With a leopard and two tigers in his truck, he found a real estate agent in Terre Haute. "I'm looking for a place with no neighbors," he told the agent.
The Center opened in 1991 and he now has seven full-time employees, and two part-time helpers. They rely on revenue from admissions for tours of the compound to keep the Center going. $100,000.00 of its $266,000.00 budget came from visitors in 2004. Donations and animal naming rights contribute to the efforts to keep them going also.
This is a special note about a special volunteer at the Center. It is a quote used by permission of the writer, Stephen McCloud at the Center.
"Sometime in the mid 1990's Jean Herrberg started coming to EFRC as a volunteer. She was just in time to hand-raise two baby lions, Spirit and Parker. After traveling back and forth to her teaching job in Columbus, Indiana Jean decided to retire from teaching and move to Centerpoint, Indiana her original home where family members were still living. Jean is now the Center's Assistant Director. Jean can be found traveling
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