Carey On Safari
Lion Country Safari had plenty of bad press but the incident with Carey and the lions was never made public. The place opened in 1970 in Irvine with its 140 acres snug up against the side of the 405 freeway. Visitors paid an entrance fee to drive their own cars on a 4 mile road that wound through a collection of animals that all appeared to roam free. The lions and the creatures they normally feasted on were separated by barriers that were positioned in gullies and thus unseen from the road. You moved along at your own rate and could stop as often and for as long as you wanted. You were instructed to keep all doors and windows closed at all times.
Unlike in the wild, all of these animals were well fed by the caretakers. As for the lions, with no need to hunt down prey, the big cats slept all day in the hot weather and rarely even lifted their heads when cars drove up and stopped. Carey liked the idea of checking out lions close up but not if they were sacked out the whole time. D'Antonio told Carey there was a way to activate the lions and get them to approach your car. D'Antonio claimed he had taken along in his glove compartment a pork chop tied to a string and parked so that the snoozing lions were downwind. He cracked open the window and let the chop dangle outside the car. It took a few minutes for the hot sun and the light breeze to do their job but eventually one of the lions perked up. As a couple of lions approached the car he reeled in the chop. Before long there were several lions surrounding the car with one licking the outside of the window where the chop had been resting.
Carey was determined to give it a try despite D'Antonio's reputation for being somewhat thick in the head. In fact he was thick all over. Concern for his weight and limited mobility had led his high school football coach to require him to use Metrecal to reduce his weight during the summer before D'antonio's senior year. Metrecal was introduced in the early 1960s and was similar to today's Slim-Fast. The Metrecal portion-controlled diet plan consisted of downing 4 cans of a 225-calorie protein milkshake per day and became fairly popular despite its horrendous taste. Betty Friedan in her book The Feminine Mystique rails against the product that many women lived on in an effort to become thin. At the end of the summer the football team showed up at the gym for their pre-season weight-in. D'Antonio had managed to gain 20 pounds. The coach was beside himself and accused D'Antonio of not caring enough about the team to try to lose weight. D'Antonio told the coach, "That's not true coach, I drank a can with every meal."
Carey was working as a pit boss for the Gardena club at the time and living in Carson. He was quite a fixture at the poker club. He was privileged to have the chore of announcing over the public address system when seats came available at the different tables. The players would enter the club and ask to have their initials posted to a board for a specific table. The tables were differentiated by set amounts for the ante and all bets that followed. Such as $2-$4, $3-$6, $5-$10, $10-$20, etc. Lastly the type of game was included such as draw, low ball, blind, etc. When someone playing at a table got up to leave, it was Carey who would announce the initials of the person next in line and the table with the opening. Such as, "R.W. on 3-6 low ball," which isn't much to work with. However, Carey would wait until he had a handful of vacancies to ramble back-to-back then uncoil an overly-dramatic delivery sounding like a Gregorian chant. When he just had a single, he would roll it out like a ring announcer at a wrestling match. His routine was so unique that when they filmed The Driver with Ryan O'Neal at the club, they insisted on having Carey do his thing over the PA. In the first few minutes of the film, you can hear Carey's voice in the background spouting off initials and tables.
The people that gamble at poker clubs are mostly addicts. The clubs make money by charging an hourly-rate to the players for their seat in a game. 80% of them play a minimum of 5 days a week and are dead serious about getting in as many hands as possible during the time that they are paying for at the table. A player sitting at the $5-$10 blind table one night suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the floor next to his chair. As Carey applied CPR that saved the guy's life, the other 7 players never stopped playing. As the paramedics wheeled the guy away, one of the 7 at the table said to Carey, "What's the hold up? Let's get another player in here."
Carey was living with Kitty at the time and together they made the 25 minute drive down to Lion Country. Carey stopped on the way and pulled into a grocery store. They didn't have any pork chops so Carey settled for 2 pounds of ground chuck. They arrived at the entrance, paid the admission fee, and drove on into the park. After about a quarter mile, Carey pulled over in what he was certain to be a safe area in the shade of a tree and got out of the car. He took the package of meat and walked to the rear of the car. He opened the paper wrapping and used it to spread a layer of ground chuck on the top surface of the back bumper. The back bumper on a Triumph TR4 is only a few inches wide and the 2 pounds was enough to cover nearly the entire length. He got back in the car and drove on ahead looking for the lions.
Carey spotted the lions but there wasn't a breath of wind so he just pulled up as close as he could to where 4 of them appeared to be sleeping. The bumper sat in the direct sun and it wasn't long before the lions all took notice. They began to exhibit behavior very much unlike the docile window licking described by D'Antonio. The lions struggled with the bumper as though they were trying to bring down a Zebra. They were definitely enjoying the ground chuck but were becoming quite pissed in their failed efforts to remove the bumper. One of the lions leaped on top of the Triumph and started working on removing the Targa top, and this was the point where Kitty lost it.
Lion Country Safari did not allow convertibles for obvious reasons. A Targa top is somewhat different. Instead of material (hence the term "rag top"), a Targa top is removable but it is a solid panel that serves as the roof of the car. The word "Targa" comes from Targa Florio which was once a major endurance event on the European race circuit that ran up and down the mountains near Palermo in Sicily. Interestingly enough, in Italian "Targa" means plate.
As if sitting in the cramped 2-seat Triumph with 300-400 pound man-eaters engulfing the car weren't enough, Kitty was suddenly reminded that the Targa top was removable and began screaming uncontrollably. Lion Country animal handlers arrived in their safari jeeps and managed to get all but one of the lions away from the Triumph. The lion that remained hadn't yet finished with the back bumper and nothing would get him to release his hold. Using a bullhorn, one of the handlers instructed Carey to drive away slowly. Carey did so dragging the lion with him for a ways until the handlers finally managed to get the stubborn lion to retreat back to where he belonged.
Carey was escorted out of the park and after a brief conversation with park officials was refunded his admission fee with the proviso that he agree never to return.