Victoria Advocate from Victoria, Texas • 69

2-THE VICTORIA ADVOCATE, Sunday, September 14, 1986. Henry's Journal Growing Real Brown Cotton By Henry Wolff Jr. Mentioned cotton picking the other day, and then Virginia Weaver calls and asks if I would like to see some brown cotton. Saw a lot of brown cotton when I lived in West Texas, but that was from the dust. She was talking about real brown cotton.

I hadn't ever seen any like that before, except three or four years ago Victor Spiegelhauer told me he'd brought back some seed from Louisiana or somewhere like that, but when it got around to picking time I'd forgotten about it. Believe Darrell May also had some in his garden at one time, and Leon Raaz was telling me Just the other day that he has some growing in his garden at Wood Hi. He also has a little regular cotton again out at the Raaz Bros, place off Gin Road. The past several years their small patch has been the only cotton in Victoria County that I know of, except for little garden patches like the brown cotton we're talking about. Mrs.

Weaver said her sister, Mildred Crouch, had a pretty good row of brown cotton growing in her garden in the Primrose Addition and that the bolls were beginning to open if I wanted to see what it looks like, so I went over there one morning last week to take a look. It looks like cotton, but not exactly, and the lint certainly is brown, or maybe more what we call khaki. In fact, I've been told experiments were conducted with the brown cotton at one time with the idea it might make good khaki uniforms. Other than for that, I haven't been able to learn much about it, or where it came from originally, but then there are a lot of different kinds of cotton, even a cotton tree The little row of cotton is absolutely load ed with squares of all sizes, blooms, green bolls, and those already open, and T.D. Crouch says he believes it would make a bale to the acre.

They'd like to find someone who could spin little of it, see what kind of yarn it would make and just how close to khaki it might be. They got the seed from another of Mrs. Crouch's sisters. Hazel Sarlls, who was telling me that she got it from Nora Kalich of the Guadalupe Community, who got her seed from Spiegelhauer. Mrs.

Kalich had brought some seed to the Senior Citizens Center, where Mrs. Sarlls heads up the quilting. The Crouchs coordinate the Jubilee Store there, where products made by the senior citizens are offered for sale to the public. Mrs. Sarlls was telling me that her late husband, Edward had one of the first cotton picking machines in Victoria County, and all the sisters grew up around cotton.

Their father, Noah Corder, farmed cotton in the Lone Tree Community, so they all know something about it, except maybe for brown cotton which is new to a lot of us. I always figured cotton had to be white to be cotton, but that's sure not the case. Course like I mentioned, we had plenty of brown cotton in West Texas especially after a good duststorm, but I never knew before Spiegelhauer was telling me about the brown cotton that it could be grown that way on purpose. Now that I've seen it, I believe him. The Corder sisters, left to right, Virginia Weaver, Mildred Crouch and Hazel Sarlls, inspect a row of brown cotton growing in Mrs.

Crouch's backyard garden in the Primrose Addition. Except for a different shape in the leaf structure, the cotton grows pretty much like any cotton, but has a brownish colored lint. color of the leaves is about like other cotton. Some of the plants in the Crouch garden are almost six feet in height. "I wouldn't want to pick in cotton like that," Mrs.

Crouch says. "Would be going up and down all the time, I'd sure enough have vertigo." from what I've heard. The brown cotton is somewhat different from the upland cotton we're accustomed to seeing, in that it has very distinct pronged leaves more like okra or something like that, and the bolls only contain four locks of lint. The blooms look pretty much like any cotton, and the Exotic Pets Find Way to Las Vegas Zoo By CHARLES HILLINGER (c) im, Ltt AlHMM TilHM- Wktt. Ft Nm Sarvtc LAS VEGAS, Nev.

Half the animals in Nevada's only zoo came from private homes and backyards in this gambling metropolis. "This town is full of fascinating people from all over the world, people with exotic tastes. Keeping lions, tigers and leopards as family pets isn't all that unusual in Las Vegas," said Pat Dingle, 39, director of the Southern Nevada Zoological Park as he groomed the mane of'Arnie, a 2V4-year-old, 400-pound African lion. Dingle, a former homicide detective, estimated that 200 to 300 big cats are kept in private homes in Las Vegas. Permits are granted to keep some of those animals in certain sections of the city and surrounding area.

But many are kept illegally as pets. "It's crazy. I believe there are more lions, tigers, leopards and ocelots in Las Vegas homes than in any city in the country," Dingle said. Many of those animals make their way to the zoo with the cooperation of the local animal shelter and state and federal wildlife agencies. Arnie, for instance, was a baby when given to a Las Vegas showgirl as a 1983 Christmas present.

By the time Arnie was 3 months old and weighed 25 pounds, its owner decided that an African lion really did not belong in an apartment house. She gave the lion to the animal shelter, which presented it to the Las Vegas zoo. Other house pets that are now zoo animals include a 4-year-old female Bengal The zoo was launched in 1981 by Dingle, who may be the only former cop anywhere running a zoological park. A radar man aboard the aircraft carrier Yorktown for four years during the Vietnam War, he joined the North Las Vegas Police Department when he was 21 upon leaving the Navy. He was chief of detectives when he retired in 1980 after a dozen years on the police force.

"Since I was a kid growing up in Alham-bra, I have always had birds, especially parrots," Dingle said. "My older brother, Sheldon, is editor of Watchbird magazine, a leading bird publication." While a detective in 1979, he opened a local bird shop, known as For the Birds. "It was an overnight success. I quit the police force the following year to spend full time with the business," he recalled. At For the Birds he exhibited his personal birds, which some regarded as the finest collection of exotic birds and talking parrots in Nevada.

He purchased several small animals, including goats, sheep, a llama, and started a petting zoo for children of his customers. "There was nowhere in Nevada where children or adults could see lions, tigers, apes and other wild animals except in animal acts at casinos. They could only read about them in books, see them in movies or on TV or travel great distances to see them," Dingle said. "The idea hit me. Nevada needs a zoo." So, 3'2 years ago, he opened the Southern (See ZOO, Page 9) Zoo director Pat Dingle feeds charges.

tiger named Zarah and a 3-year-old Asian spotted leopard named Samantha. Some offers, however, are refused. "We turned away 20 big cats so far this year," Dingle said. "We don't have the room or facilities to house them at the present." The zoo is on a half-acre site on Rancho Boulevard at the north end of the city. Another SVfe acres adjacent have been purchased, and a master plan has been drawn up for an $8 million, six-acre zoo logical park.

Dingle said lawyers and accountants are preparing plans for the zoo to go public with a stock sale sometime next year. Several prominent Nevada ns are members of the zoo's advisory board and board of directors. The zoo has had the backing of area business and government leaders, and more than 500 people have become association members by paying annual dues. Iklff ft ft i---'. ft ft i' -V.