Team Rodent - Carl Hiaasen [10]
Meanwhile, the Orlando Sentinel reports that the flashing lights on Disney’s security vehicles have been changed from red to amber, so as not to be taken for those of real cop cars. In addition, Disney’s uniformed guards—the “hosts” and “hostesses”—no longer use Dragnet-style police codes when talking over the radio.
Goofy’s gendarmes still do an impressive job of keeping order, though. Every now and then reality intrudes—a shoplifter, a flasher, a fistfight between tourists, an accidental fall, a fatal heart attack on the Space Mountain roller coaster. Such incidents are handled with astounding swiftness and discretion, the scene usually cleared and back to normal within minutes. Team Rodent’s crisis squads appear ready for every imaginable emergency.
Well, maybe not every emergency. As I write this, a potentially breathtaking drama is unfolding within stalking distance of Adventureland. A full-grown African lioness has escaped from a roadside zoo called JungleLand, on State Road 192. Also known as the Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, it’s one of Florida’s all-time unsightliest thoroughfares, crammed with T-shirt shops, fast-food joints, cut-rate car rental lots, bargain motels, and souvenir kiosks. The road looks like this for one reason: It’s on the way to Disney World.
The escaped cat is called Nala, named (predictably) after a lioness character in Disney’s animated blockbuster The Lion King. The real-life Nala has vanished into a stretch of heavy woods off 192, not far from an International House of Pancakes. Teams of armed searchers and wildlife officers are trying to track the animal, while journalists from all over the world cluster in safety along the shoulder of the highway. Even the major TV networks are keeping tabs on the slapdash safari. Like other Florida newspapers, the Miami Herald has published a locator map showing the estimated proximity of the fugitive lioness to the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and the Disney-MGM Studios. Presumably this information will help tourists weigh the risk of a visit and plan their routes accordingly. Indeed, much of the news coverage deals with speculation that the big cat is making her way toward Disney property.
Sweet Jesus, just imagine: the hot-blooded 450-pound namesake of a Disney cartoon lion, bounding down Main Street U.S.A. (perhaps during the nightly SpectroMagic Parade!) and with one lightning swipe of a paw taking down Goofy or Pluto, or maybe one of those frigging chipmunks. A harrowing primal eruption—and Disney could blame no one but itself!
Because Nala wouldn’t be loose in Orlando if there was no JungleLand, and there would be no JungleLand if there was no Walt Disney World.
So the escaped lioness has a secret fan club that believes a split second of raw predation might be good for Team Rodent’s soul. And while it is being widely reported that the big cat is declawed, I choose not to believe it.
Forgive us our fantasies.
The Puppy King
IN DECEMBER 1997 DISNEY chairman Michael D. Eisner exercised company stock options that brought him $565 million in a single swoop. The notion of attaching such a sum to one man’s job is both obscene and hilarious on its face, yet it’s pointless to debate whether or not Eisner deserves it. He got the dough.
It happened in the same month that Business Week chose Disney’s board of directors as the worst in America. The reason: Many seemed to have been handpicked not so much for their business expertise as for their loyalty to the autocratic Eisner. Among the company’s directors are his personal architect, his personal attorney, the principal of his children’s elementary school, and seven current and former Disney executives. “Fantastic” is how Eisner has described his choices for the board, but critics say it’s a meek and malleable group. That’s precisely what was needed to sit still for the ludicrous $75 million platinum parachute given to Michael Ovitz as compensation for fourteen whole months as president of the Walt Disney Company. Hiring the Hollywood super-agent had been Eisner’s idea, but the decision