Bobcat pounced, then media

When word got out that Dale Rippy had strangled the animal, he became an instant celebrity.

By CAMILLE C. SPENCER
Published June 26, 2007

Dale Rippy stands in the woods behind his home in Wesley Chapel. Rippy thinks this is the area where the rabid bobcat came from.
	[Times photo: Mike Pease]

ADVERTISEMENT [Photo courtesy of Dale Rippy] The 62-year-old Vietnam veteran said he was acting on instinct when he strangled the rabid 25-pound (11-kilogram) bobcat that attacked him on the back porch of his Florida home. Rippy was treated for exposure to rabies, and several bites and cuts.

WESLEY CHAPEL - The story sounded unbelievable.

Man discovers rabid bobcat in his back yard. Bobcat attacks. Man strangles bobcat. Man's neighbor takes photos of man in bloody T-shirt as proof that the above really occurred.

The story fit perfectly into the "weird news of the day" category.

And so began the media frenzy.

After the story of Dale Rippy ran June 19 in the St. Petersburg Times, the retired Vietnam veteran became an instant celebrity.

First a trio of local news trucks camped out in front of his house in the Villages of Wesley Chapel, preparing for live broadcasts.

Then Rippy's story was picked up all over the country by news outlets such as Fox News, the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune.

On Web sites and blogs, people called the 62-year-old a "real American hero." They posted things like, "don't mess with the Rip-ster."

Rippy's story even went international, appearing in an Australian publication, the Brisbane Times.

Back at home, Rippy's phone rang off the hook. Rippy can't remember who called first.

He just remembers that radio stations in Tampa, Miami and Jacksonville wanted to hear him tell his story.

"For 2 1/2 days, it was just call after call," Rippy said. "The first day and a half, it was kind of exciting. But some of these stations were asking really silly questions. I think it should be taken very seriously and not something that should be made for a comedy-type show."

Rippy was wheeling his garbage cans to his back porch the morning of May 30 when he found the grumbling bobcat.

The 25-pound creature pounced, biting Rippy's abdomen and clawing at Rippy's arms and legs. Rippy grabbed the bobcat's neck and strangled it. Tests later confirmed the bobcat had rabies.

As the story gained momentum, Rippy fielded calls from radio stations in Seattle, Los Angeles and Norfolk, Va.

"Sometimes, they would call and be ready to put me on the air right then," he said.

Later that week, CNN posted a live interview on its Web site with Rippy in his back yard. Rippy was even asked to fly to New York to appear on the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends. He declined. Rippy dislikes crowds.

His neighbors, Barbara and George Ahlers, who took the photos of Rippy after the May 30 attack, faced their own media frenzy.

In addition to TV interviews, the couple got a call Friday from the National Examiner, a tabloid magazine that offered the couple $100 for each photo of Rippy taken after the attack.

"Anything they give me, I'll split with him Rippy," said Barbara Ahlers, who e-mailed a couple of pictures to the tabloid.

Rippy's plight somewhat mirrors that of Jennifer Mee, the St. Petersburg teen whose persistent hiccups made her an instant celebrity, said Tony Silvia, director of the department of journalism and media studies at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. "The line between who is a private person and who is public is becoming ever thinner," Silvia said.

"Let's face it. All you have to do to become a public person is have something unusual or dramatic happen in a public place. You'll have a public persona whether you like it or not."

For Rippy, becoming an instant celebrity has had its ups and downs.

By Friday, he'd grown tired of the attention. So Rippy, a retired phone company manager, started screening his calls.

"When area codes would come up and I wouldn't recognize them, I knew it would be a talk radio show," he said. "I know a lot of area codes from having worked with the phone company for so long."

Besides, Rippy had more important business to tend to.

"It was interrupting the things I was trying to get done around the house," he said, "like trimming bushes and mowing the lawn."

Camille C. Spencer can be reached at cspencer@sptimes.com or (727) 869-6229.

[Last modified June 25, 2007, 21:23:12]