MUSEUM PLANS GOING WILD : COLLECTOR HELPING TO INCREASE PUBLIC AWARENESS OF SPECIES.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

Carl Anderson loves animals, great and small.

His collection includes a monkey so little it wears Newborn Huggies, to a crocodile the size of a surfboard. He handles each with the care of a doting dad. He baby-talks when one of them does something cute.

He is not, however, an animal lover of the warm and fuzzy school.

He eats meat, wears leather and calls animal rights activists ``humaniacs.'' This Anderson explains sitting in his cluttered office holding a menthol cigarette, the smoke collecting around the snouts, ears and frozen expressions of more than 200 mounted trophies.

``Animals are like my family,'' he said. ``I have spent my whole life learning about them and teaching others about them. But I try to stay out of the politics.''

Staying out of politics is getting more difficult as plans progress for the Fillmore Natural History Museum, the public headquarters of an organization Anderson formed six years ago. The museum is being hailed as cornerstone of the developing tourist industry in this small community still rebounding from the Northridge Earthquake.

Wildlife Educators of America (WEA) has so far limited itself to introducing wild animals to school and senior groups. But the museum will feature fossils, dioramas, aquariums and more than 100 mounted specimens donated by collectors and hunters across the country. The concept won the support of the Fillmore City Council two weeks ago, and Anderson hopes to open as early as March of next year in an empty supermarket on Central Street.

The museum will be filled with trophies currently kept on Anderson's 120-acre ranch on a north-facing slope outside Fillmore. He moved here eight months ago with his wife, Dawn Ulrich, and a collection of creatures so unusual that he needs several state licenses just to keep them.

About three times a week, Anderson and a staff of WEA workers and volunteers take the animals out on the road for demonstrations across Southern California. The African monkeys travel in cat carriers, the armadillos go in sealed boxes and the snakes commute in a duffel bag.

``The average person knows only about 15 percent of the animal species in the world,'' said Anderson. ``We're helping to change that, little by little.''

At home the animals are given constant attention. Ulrich treats her favorites with the kind of care reserved for children.

``God knew I was never going to have kids because I was born without the right plumbing - so I'm here to take care of the animals,'' she said, stroking the back of a quivering 6-month-old macaque called Simon. ``That's what I'm here to do.''

In front of the house, a metal cage bustles with three Coatimundis, little raccoon-like mammals known for their inquisitiveness. Nearby lives Boie, a furry black creature in the mongoose family that gives off the distinct odor of buttered popcorn. He was a big hit on the ``Tonight Show'' in May, slinking over Jay Leno's shoulders with hardly a whimper.

Anderson loves them all, and they love him - all except Eya, a gray wolf that dominates the pack of wolves kept in a cage up the hill. Eya snaps at everyone except Ron Merkord, the organization board member who specializes in wolves.

``Ron could spend the night in that cage,'' Anderson said. ``If I spent the night in there you'd find nothing but clothing and buttons the next morning.''

The museum is the culmination of a dream hatched six years ago when Anderson was an experimental biologist working for Oregon Fish and Wildlife. Part of his job was catching raccoons in campgrounds and releasing them in the wild.

``One day I had this raccoon in a cage and this old woman came up and asked me, `is that a weasel?' '' he said. ``That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I thought, if this woman didn't know what a raccoon was, what did her kids think? I had to do something about that.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--color in SIMI and CONEJO only) This collection of mounted animals, donated by private collectors, is to be part of the planned Fillmore Natural History Museum.

(2--color in SIMI only) Dawn Ulrich shows off two pigtail macaques planned for the wildlife museum.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News