The predator becomes prey
Livestock in Wimauma keep dying because nothing can fend off the stray dogs. So the grieving owners step up.
By LEONORA LaPETER
Published July 25, 2005
WIMAUMA - The billy goat stands in the empty field beneath a full moon and a pinkish-purple sky, bleating loudly.
From a tiny window in a trailer, Bruce Kraus peeks out with a cigar in his hand and a rifle by his side.
The goat is bait for a pack of wild dogs. It had come from a livestock auction the day before, a few days after dogs dug under the fence of Kraus' animal pens and killed his eight pet goats and sheep. The animals had been like family to Kraus and his wife, who'd bottle-raised them and even put diapers on them so they could come in the house.
Kraus just moved his fish farm to Wimauma, on Hillsborough County's southernmost edge, after development pushed him out of Gibsonton. Now he wants to move his horse onto the property, but he's been advised the dogs will go after it, too.
The Krauses have found that you can still buy 20 acres of rural life, but sometimes, when you're in that middle ground between Florida's backwoods and Florida's development boom, you don't always get what you bargained for.
"This is a growing area, and I don't think people realize that if they put their poodle in the yard, it's not going to be there the next morning," Kraus said. "This is what's scary ... This is not Wyoming. This is Florida."
And so it has come to this: a man and his .22-caliber rifle and his goat, facing off wild dogs. Kraus, a self-avowed animal lover, said he can't rest until the last dog is dead.
* * *
Development is coming. It just hasn't arrived yet.
Kraus, 57, like many of the property owners around him, sought out Wimauma for its cheaper land prices. About 4,000 people live here, 70 percent of them Hispanic. The landscape is filled with fish farms and nurseries and farm workers' trailers.
A mile or 2 away, a Wal-Mart Supercenter and about 2,000 homes are drawn in plans sitting on the desks of Hillsborough County planners.
And then there are the dogs. Residents report seeing packs of them wandering down the road or on their property. Kraus said just about every property owner along his street has a story of a lost goat or a lost antelope, even a lost wallaby.
"Wimauma is a pretty transient population, and what's happening is development is coming in with $300,000 homes going in opposite trailers for farm workers," said Dennis McCullough, an investigative supervisor with Hillsborough County's Department of Animal Services. "And I think as development is starting to move into this area, you are seeing a clash of two different lifestyles."
David Kitchen, a tropical fish farmer just down the street from Kraus, has been battling dogs for the past eight years. Kitchen has about 50 to 60 exotic animals on his 23 acres, including three tigers, 11 leopards, bears, baboons, deer, antelope, wallaroos, wallabies, black swans and white swans that roam around an Old West town he built.
He's lost about 10 animals to dogs, despite an elaborate array of fences and pens. He has shot dead three dogs that came onto his property.
"People started moving in here, and dogs started running around more," said Kitchen, 62, who's lived here 38 years.
Many of the dogs belong to fellow rural landowners who don't feel the need to keep their dogs on a leash. Others belong to farm workers who leave them behind when they depart. Still others are dumped at the end of the back roads because it's a quiet place to leave an unwanted dog.
Kraus and others said animal control workers listen patiently to their complaints but are not taking the problem seriously enough.
McCullough, the animal control supervisor, acknowledged Wimauma has a stray dog problem but said Hillsborough's Animal Services Department does not have the staff to be proactive.
"This is an issue across rural Florida,"' said Jim Hosler, an economic development team leader with the Hillsborough Planning Commission. "It's hard to catch dogs in that area. There are a lot of abandoned buildings and trailers, a lot of abandoned fish farms and illegal dumps. Dogs can live on the fringe and be successful. If I was a feral dog, that's where I'd want to live.
"So unless you start to have open season on dogs, it's going to be an interesting transition."
* * *
Once it turned dark, Kraus went out to retrieve the goat. No dogs had shown up.
"This is no fun, is it, dude?" he said to the goat, as he led it away for the night. "Yeah, it's no fun for me, either."
It's hard for Kraus to remove the image of his dead goats and sheep from his head. When his employees arrived in the morning, six of the dogs were still milling around. By the time an animal control officer got there, they were gone.
Kraus said the officer told him to shoot at dogs that come onto his property. This is legal if someone is protecting his livestock, animal control officials said.
So now Kraus has become the predator.
The other day, two dogs appeared. He aimed his rifle at them and pulled the trigger three or four times. Dirt rose near the dogs, but they got away.
"I love animals," Kraus said. "This is not me."
He recognized the dogs as belonging to a neighbor and called animal control officers. They cited the neighbor for letting a black Labrador retriever and pit bullterrier mix run at large, a $110 offense.
An animal control officer left Kraus with a trap cage and encouraged him to place cat food in it. But when Kraus saw fresh dog tracks on his property, he figured the trap was not working. So now he has returned to using the goat as bait.
"I shouldn't have to do this," he said. "If these were the mayor's goats, something would be done about this. But this is Wimauma, and so it's not."
--Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.