CHURUBUSCO, Ind. — Crunch is more than 150 years old, weighs 165 pounds and can polish off a 9-pound meal in a single sitting.

An alligator snapping turtle, Crunch resides in a specially built confine in Churubusco, and five times a year he's transported in a 700-gallon tank to be shown as an exhibit at various zoos and functions across the country.

But because Crunch is a considered a wild animal, his owner, Russell Reed, needed to get a permit from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to keep him.

A recent attack by a privately owned bear that left one man dead in a Cleveland suburb highlighted lax wild and exotic animal laws in Ohio, laws that the state legislature there has vowed to tighten.

In Indiana, laws already exist to control, or at least monitor, the ownership of wild and exotic animals.

Except where a city ordinance — like one in Fort Wayne — outlaws the ownership of a dangerous animal, it is legal to own creatures like a bear, as long as the Department of Natural Resources approves it and you have the proper, state-regulated structure to house the wild animal.

Unlike Ohio and eight other states, Indiana requires a permit to own animals from a skunk to lions and tigers and even certain large turtles, like Crunch. Each animal someone owns requires a different permit. Reed has four, because he owns three other alligator snapping turtles to keep Crunch company.

And as of now, 300 permits have been issued in the state for people to own such animals — 12 in northeast Indiana.

Indiana law divides wild animals permits into three classes.

Class I wild animals include rabbits and squirrels and are defined as not a threat to public safety. Class II wild animals include creatures such as coyotes, red foxes and raccoons — animals that according to state law "may pose a threat to human safety."

Class III is where the big cats, bears and venomous reptiles come in.

All wild animals must be kept in cages or enclosures and housed in buildings. But for a Class III animal, additional steps are required.

To own a tiger or bear, you must have a cage or enclosure that is surrounded by a 6-foot-high fence, made of material that is equal in strength to a chain-link fence. A venomous reptile must be kept in a locked container in a building with plenty of notices there is such an animal present.

"There have been no escapes of any Class III animals outside their primary or secondary enclosures for those under the wild animal possession permit (bears, tigers, etc.) for 10 years or more," wrote Linnea Petercheff, operations staff specialist for the Indiana DNR's Division of Fish and Wildlife, in an e-mail.

In Allen County, though, there was one case of a cougar that escaped from its owner's car on the way home from a veterinary clinic.

The cougar, a 150-pounder named Samson, had to be shot and killed after attempts to tranquilize it failed. It's not clear whether the animal's owner had a permit to own such an animal, but he was ordered by a judge to relinquish it as well as other wild animals he kept at his house.

The owner apparently kept the cougar in a cage behind his home. State law indicates such an animal needs an adequate den to be owned. The owner was ordered to pay more than $7,000 in attorney's fees in settling a lawsuit his neighborhood association filed against him in regard to his pets.

In the case of the giant turtle Crunch and his three companions — a 135-pound alligator snapping turtle plus two, 10-pound alligator snapping turtles — his owner, Reed, keeps them in a building separate from his home.

This building, called the Blackwater Turtle Refuge, has temperature controls, timed day and night cycles, cameras to record the turtles and even moon phases, Reed said.

"They're my passion," Reed said of the turtles.

Reed's enclosure, much like the enclosures needed to keep wild animals of any class, are inspected once a year by the Department of Natural Resources, according to Petercheff.

Someone who does not have a proper permit to own the animals or the proper enclosure to house them could be cited with a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine or even jail time, according to Petercheff.

Sometimes, depending on the situation, people are given a time frame in which to comply with the laws before being issued a citation, Petercheff said.

Petercheff also said there have been few reported attacks by animals owned with a valid permit holder in the past 10 years.

A bear did attack a woman while she was feeding it in its cage, but the woman was not critically injured and still owns the bear. There was another reported bear scratch in a separate incident and a bite from a venomous snake in another.

The owner of the snake received appropriate care and continues to own snakes under permits, according to Petercheff.

Within the city limits, an animal not indigenous to the state or not commonly found as a domestic animal with the ability to create a risk for public safety cannot be owned as a pet.

This includes bears, wolves, lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, cougars, alligators, crocodiles, caimans, snakes, venomous reptiles, apes, baboons, macaques or any hybrid of those animals, according to a city ordinance adopted in 2003.

The law was passed because of the high number of caimans and crocodiles being found as pets in the city at the time, according to Belinda Lewis, director of Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control.

"We were picking them up a lot," Lewis said. "People thought it was cool to get them. They were kind of an impulse purchase. Then they would get big and not fun of to take care of anymore, and people would release them into the city."

Someone found keeping such an animal within the city limits has seven days to find a new location for it, Lewis said. The one exception is if someone owned a wolf-hybrid prior to the law — that species was grandfathered in if the animal was owned before the ordinance.

Animal Care and Control sometimes assists in finding new locations for such animals. There are some big-cat sanctuaries the agency uses, Lewis said.

If the pet owner does not comply with the ordinance within seven days, or if they bring the animal back after assuring Animal Care and Control it has been relocated, court action and fines can be assessed, Lewis said.

Since the law was passed, though, there have been few instances of people owning wild animals brought to the attention of Lewis's agency, which enforces the city ordinance.

Recently a police agency found a foot-long crocodile in a home, and last year there was a complaint of someone owning a wolf-hybrid, Lewis said.

In northeast Indiana, Crunch the turtle might just be the most unusual animal owned by a permit holder.

"He's one of the largest left alive in the world," said Reed of Crunch.

In the Fort Wayne area, one person has permits for a couple of coyotes, a raccoon and one red fox. In Huntertown, a resident has a permit to own a skunk.

So do two others in Huntington, while another resident also owns a skunk. A Whitley County resident is allowed to own a raccoon.

A Kosciusko County resident also has a red fox, according to state DNR records.

A few people do have permits to own a bear, according to state records. Hartford City, Fairfield, Wheatfield and Terre Haute have one resident each permitted to own a bear.

In Idaville, one man is listed having permits to own three bears as well as an assortment of cougars, lions and tigers.

That man, Rob Craig, also runs the Great Cats of Indiana Sanctuary, according to the organization's website.

Craig could not be reached by phone or e-mail for this story.

The sanctuary used to be open to the public for tours, but that has since changed, according to the website.

The reasons for the change will be revealed at a later date, according to the website
www.therepublic.com/view/story/9cdb34cf4846463c8f1530da4ed766b3/IN--Exchange-Exotic_Animals-Permits/

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