A horse in Enumclaw, Washington. All photos by Kelly O
Annons
Annons
Charles Mudede: Yes, I'm actually in Enumclaw, Washington, right now to take photos and see if anything interesting is going on. The town got rid of the sign on the farm where it happened—that was the only act of erasure that I noticed. No one wants to talk about what happened, though.Once the law changed, and bestiality was made illegal in Washington, everyone sort of said, "It's over and it will never happen again. And if it does happen again, we'll know what to do." No one has been arrested for bestiality in Washington since, to my knowledge.Once the law came into effect, the whole Washington community of zoophiliacs moved to states where it was legal to do what they wanted to do. They were absolutely terrified of going to jail. When I talked to them, they weren't breaking the law, and they didn't want to. That's part of the reason this was never a for-profit animal prostitution ring type of thing. After James Michael Tait, the ringleader, was caught, he moved to Tennessee because there are no laws about bestiality there [Tait was arrested and charged with animal cruelty in Tennessee in 2009]. They don't want to be thought of like child pornographers or child molesters. They don't want to be treated like those criminals.
Annons
We did look for them, but we couldn't find any. The one thing this group had was someone who was a really good organizer. Tait really went out of his way to cultivate the community. He was very selective about who could join and did the whole territorial thing. If you don't have that, it will fall apart.Other zoos are probably more individual. They were afraid that if they were outed, they'd lose everything—which is exactly what would happen. So unless you had an extremely organized leader, you likely wouldn't be sharing this private thing with other people. If you can play it safe, animals don't talk. Zoos keep it quiet.How do you think Mr. Hands's death affected the zoophilia community on a larger scale?
It disrupted them—they lost a lot by his death. If you have a moral problem with horse fucking, you might not find this to be a cool way to look at things, but I think the truth is that they lost a lot: stability, a weekend vacation getaway place, something to look forward to. They lost a community. When the death happened, they were exposed. They were looked at, they were investigated. It was a major disruption!
Annons
They would literally bend over and wait for the horse to fuck them. They'd also put some type of scent on themselves—the pheromone people use to get horses to breed.Did they ever fuck the horses?
No, that wasn't their school. There are all different sorts of flavors of zoos. Their thing was about getting fucked in the ass. There were others who liked that, but that was not their circle. They wanted the studs and the bulls. Never cows. There was this element of cocks, big cocks. They never talked about pussies. If my memory stands correct, these men were also fucking each other. After they got fucked by a horse, they'd play games with each other and their stretched assholes.
Annons
They had preferences! They would figure out which horse was too strong, which had the biggest cock, which was the quickest fuck. It was like going to a horse auction.They were really into the cows, too. One of the guys literally said he planned on eating one of the bulls after it fucked him. I found that to be very problematic. Getting fucked by something you were going to eat? He was super darkly into zoophilia in a way that was unlike the others.A lot of these guys wanted to see themselves as massive animal fuckers—guys who could take on huge things. They would even talk about fucking dolphins, which supposedly have big cocks.[The sex writer and then Stranger editor-in-chief] Dan Savage and I would talk about if it was a fetish for animals, or a fetish for massive cocks. That question was there the whole time we were working on Zoo and I never found out the answer. This could undermine their claims of being zoo. I must admit it was on my mind, but we didn't explore these questions enough. We were mostly focused on Mr. Hands's actual death, and the community and culture of zoos he was involved with at the time. To me, it's clearer today that these guys had this worship of cock that may have had nothing to do with horses.
The horse that killed Mr. Hands was nicknamed "Big Dick," right? It wasn't called "Nice Horse," or "Beautiful."
Annons
They loved [Zoo director] Robinson Devor and thought he was a real ally. They still email him and keep in contact. He was much more sensitive than I was. I met them and connected them to Rob, [but] he would listen to them and not laugh.Have you noticed any attitude shifts about zoophilia since the media first covered Mr. Hands? Is it just as much of a taboo now as it was then?
It's absolutely as much of a taboo as it was ten years ago. No one wants to think about it or talk about it…. Zoophilia is so out there in terms of sexuality that it's very hard to broach, and there isn't support for it from other minority groups or sexual communities. There's already enough trouble about people deciding if we should keep doing tests on chimps, but to talk about if we should be allowed to fuck them, too?Follow Zach Sokol on Twitter.