King Richard's Faire

State of the Art

by Alicia Potter

It's little wonder Kheira (one name, like Cher) is attracting her share of stares this sunny noonday at the Esplanade. First of all, she looks as if she'd wandered off the set of Xena: she wears a breast-spilling, silver-studded bra, fringy hide vest, leather wrist cuffs, black leggings tucked into black boots, and a glittering red bindi above her elaborately made-up eyes. And then, while everyone else is walking a dog this lunch hour, at the end of Kheira's leashes are two baby Bengal tigers.

"Tccht, tccht, tccht," she calls to one, and the cub's liver-sized tongue slabbers her face. This is a woman who walks -- and works -- on the wild side.

Kheira is an exotic-animal trainer, here to promote her appearance at this fall's 18th annual King Richard's Faire in Carver. She and her partner, Bhagavan Antle, are regulars at the 16th-century festival, where they put on an educational "big-cat" show featuring 10 of these oversized kitties up close and uncaged. The star is the world's largest "liger" -- 900-pound Sudan, who's a living example of what happens when lions and tigers get friendly.

Twenty-seven-year-old Kheira helps Antle run the Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (yes, "T.I.G.E.R.S.") in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This 50-acre facility -- which the couple share with 86 animals, including grizzlies, baboons, and an elephant named Bubbles -- has supplied trained beasts for more than 500 films, including Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and Dr. Dolittle.

"The animals are our children," says Kheira, who holds an associate's degree in exotic-animal training and management. "A lot of people think it's all glory and fun and don't realize it's seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We spend thousands and thousands of hours with them. That's how we train them."

Because it's illegal to import extinct wildlife into the US, most of Kheira's menagerie either were born at the compound or arrived from zoos. All have been "hand-raised" by humans, meaning they have never lived in the wild. However, says Kheira, "raising them from a baby doesn't make them nice. They're always wild animals, and given the chance, they'll take the opportunity to hurt you. It's instinctual."

Although Kheira has yet to be injured on the job, she has been attacked many times by people who say that her line of work is unfair -- or even abusive -- to animals. She wields a ready response: "There are fewer than 5000 wild tigers left, and at the rate they're still being poached, they'll be dead by 2010. So what would be cruel is to take animals that have been raised in captivity and put them into situations they've never been exposed to. These animals don't have a natural fear of people. They're going to get killed way faster than the tigers that are out there."

Besides, she explains, the ungainly, topaz-eyed creatures at her feet desire a life that's not so different from how we might spend a Saturday. "If they have the chance to have their food brought to them, they'll take it. They want to do nothing but sleep 20 hours a day."

She rakes her Bengal-striped fingernails through her long blond waves. "Actually," she adds, "I'd like to be reborn as one of our tigers. It's a great life."

King Richard's Faire is open every weekend this fall through October 17, on Route 58 in South Carver. Call (508) 866-5391.