Living with so many animals can have it’s advantages. "Doug was on the road during that giant hailstorm on May 5," Janis said. "I just went into the barn and sat in one of the empty cages. I knew if a tornado was near, the cats and dogs would let me know. I guess we weren’t in any danger, because everyone was very calm."

The neighbors don’t seem to mind. "Our neighbors are very cool about us," Terranova said. "In town they call me ‘The Elephant Man.’ I know the people closest to us probably get tired of the cats roaring at night. For about an hour every night they prowl and roar. They really put on a show."

Where many of the animals are trained to do tricks - including the dogs, the elephant and the bear - the big cats are trained to simply be manageable. The intregal parts of training are daily hands-on work, repetition and food rewards. Terranova said he doesn’t believe in punishment, only positive reinforcement.

During a typical dinner for his menagerie, the llamas (Mama Llama and her baby, Dolly Llama) eat oats. teddy, the bear, eats apples, carrots, lettuce and a variety of other fruits and vegetables (as well as the occasional fast food cheeseburger). Kamba, the elephant eats hay, lettuce and fruits.

Most of the vegetables are provided by the local grocery store. "They give us whatever the don’t sell," Terranova said.

It’s not as easy obtaining meat for the big cats. "It costs about $1,100 a year per cat to keep them well-fed," Terranova said. "I get the meat from a slaughterhouse. This is the same meat greyhounds eat. Every now and then someone will have to put down a cow or a horse, and they’ll give us the fresh carcass, which comes in real handy around here."

Terranova knows he’s pretty lucky to be able to make a living doing what he loves most, which is hang out with animals. He started volunteering at the local zoo in his small hometown in Iowa when he was 11.

"I carried food, raked pens, pulled weeds, whatever I could do to keep them from running me off," he said. "When I was 15 they hired me. My job was in the zoo’s kitchen. I cam in after school and fixed dinner for all the animals. I learned all of their diets."

Terranova turned his zoo experience into a job with the circus, which would buy hay and meat from the zoo whenever it came through town. He joined the Clyde Brothers-Johnson Circus when he was 17, and spent the next few years traveling the world, training elephants and tigers.

In 1984 Terranova retired from the circus (for the first of many times) and went to work for the now-defunct International Wildlife Park in Grand Prairie. He also met and bought Kamba, the elephant, from that park.

I liked Kamba because she was small, but she was the leader of the pack," he said. "I started training her by hand feeding and brushing her. She almost killed me once shortly after I got her. She gored me with a tusk in the chest. The police wanted to shoot her, but it was my fault. I tried to separate her from her herd and she got scared...

"If an animal feels like it needs to hurt me then I have done something wrong. I have made a mistake. That’s the only way you get hurt," he adds.

The two carry a $1 million dollar insurance policy in case of disaster. "I always have a gun around in case of an emergency. I love these animals, but not one of them is worth some kid’s life, and I’d shoot any one of them if I had to," Terranova said.

The couple said they are often the target of harassment by local animal rights activists, who object to what they see as the exploitation of the animals.

"We have a very different opinion of animals than the animal rights activists do. We look at these animals as co-workers. In every job someone is the boss," Terranova said. "We discern animal welfare as the humane and responsible care, treatment and use of animals.

"Everyone of these animals is better off now than when we got them," he adds. "The only animal we have that came from the wilds was Kamba, the elephant. She came from Zimbabwe, where she would have been killed to control overpopulation. Most of the dogs came from the pound. The cougar and the two new tigers came from people who were trying to keep them as pets in their back yards."