The large green Isuzu jeep climbs and descends the hills, leaving a trail of dust behind it, while the MIRS telephone receives and sends fragmented calls. In the back part of the vehicle are barred cages suitable for alligators and snakes. Aryeh Keller ? small, solid, somewhat potbellied since he stopped smoking, his face scorched from the summer heat ? confidently grabs the steering wheel while exchanging coarse but friendly curses with his interlocutors, who are nature preservation colleagues or friends from the police, as he continues to speed along toward his goal: rescuing baby finches.

Why do the bad guys, the ones whom the ?sheriff? is after, go after finches, of all birds? Because of the ?mules.? Anyone unfamiliar with the mule is missing something. Keller ?(whose first name means ?lion? in English?) explains: ?A mule in this context is a cross between a finch and a canary ? a bird that is a wonderful singer and has beautiful colors as well. There?s a lot of demand for these birds, they?re worth a lot, and there are people whose work is to trap the finch nestlings in order to breed mules.?

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This is an entire industry. The trappers of baby finches ? henceforth ?the collectors? ? do their work in a particularly wicked way, which we?ll get to soon. The trapped birds are transferred to breeders, who keep and mate them in special warehouses in various parts of the country. From there the mules are sent to retailers or to private customers. The more beautiful the mule, and the more classical its song, the more expensive it is. An especially fine mule can be sold for thousands of shekels. Worthy of mention is the mule Abu Khalil, a native of Hebron, who sang like no other mule ever, and whose worth was estimated at tens of thousands of shekels.

Keller says that the number of baby finches that are caught is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. ?Recently,? he explains, ?this has become an unusually widespread phenomenon, in Israel and in the territories. Don?t forget that many of them die on the way. In general, there is a bottomless market for caged birds, and mules are the biggest hit now. So you need finches, and everywhere in Israel there are collectors who hunt them. They are actually emptying the country of this beautiful, very Israeli bird.?

How does one catch such a large number of finches? There are ways. ?During the incubation season the finches gather near water sources. When the nestlings hatch and are only starting to learn to fly, people place traps there. The collectors put an adult finch next to the water source tied to a stick, they bind it with a wing harness, and that is the bait. On both sides of the stick they attach two sheets of plastic and a net, 3 x 2 meters, which are attached to a rope, and they wait for the right moment.?

The innocent nestlings, who have just begun learning to fly, come to drink water and get into trouble. ?They are attracted to the adult finch,? explains Keller, ?try to reach it, and then with one pull of the rope the plastic sheets fold, and dozens of baby birds are trapped inside the net. This is repeated 30 or 40 times, sometimes more. No method is unacceptable to the collectors. Sometimes when the female is still sitting on the eggs, and goes down for a moment to drink water, or when she sees a male and flies to him, they trap them, too. Everything for money.?

It?s not easy an easy life for 54-year-old Keller, who is national supervisor of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority ?(INPPA?), and is responsible for preventing the import and trade of wildlife. His difficult goal is to get to collectors all over the country, so he concentrates on finding the warehouses of the finches and mules. How? Intelligence. Over the years he has developed a very broad network of connections.

?Now, for example,? he says, before dialing a phone number on his cell phone, ?I?m going to check the address of one guy, Yitzhak something, in Jaffa, with the police. Often the wholesalers with the warehouses are criminals who are familiar to the police from other areas.?

The conversation is short, full of security codes, and at the end Keller explains: ?The nice guy I spoke to now is the intelligence coordinator of the Jaffa police. He?s checking for me whether the target happens to be a police source, which means we have to be more careful; he?s finding out for me of course whether there really is such a person at that address, he completes the investigations so we won?t end up with a farce, so there?ll be successes.?

Intelligence network

Wherever Keller goes, he remembers the law, which is worded as follows: ?No one can trade in a wild animal, or in part of it, or in its offspring, in Israel or abroad. And the law defines, of course, which animals are wild, in accordance with the Washington Convention ?(on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora?), to which Israel has been a signatory since 1984, to our satisfaction.?

For the purpose of his battle against illegal trade, Keller has established his own national intelligence network, which is semi-clandestine and includes people in the field, ordinary citizens, plus the spearhead: the Israel Police. ?Police units, elite units, such as the Tel Aviv area unit, for example ? I have personal ties there. Let?s say they go on a search at the home of a target who is known as a thief, they?ve finished searching for the stolen property and the heroin and all that, have already hit on him. Then they look for animals for me. Let?s say they find a snake or a monkey, immediately they?ll say ?Aryeh, come.? I?m on call for them at all hours of the day and night, seven days a week.?

So what will sheriff Keller do with the snake that was found in the criminal?s home? Here we come to another aspect of his job: his connections with every zoo and petting zoo around the country, which were created during his dozens of years as a supervisor for the INPPA. After all, someone has to protect and care for the animals that he saves, and therefore, while driving, he conducts the following conversation with one of the caretakers at the Nahariya zoo:

Keller: ?I have two water snakes for you, from Thailand.?

Caretaker: ?What are water snakes from Thailand??

Keller: ?It?s a type of nonpoisonous snake from Thailand.?

Caretaker: ?Does it stink??

Keller: ?No, it doesn?t stink. It?s very good for display.?

Caretaker: ?Great, so I probably need a wet display, with a pool.?

Keller: ?Yes, your small pool. And I?m also bringing two young alligators.?

Caretaker: ?What do you mean by young??

Keller: ?Young means half a year, something like that.?

Caretaker: ?How long??

Keller: ?About 30 centimeters. They?re for display, miss.?

Caretaker: ?Of course for display ? why, did you think I was taking them home??

Keller: ?It?s best if you come to my home in Karkur, to take them.?

Caretaker: ?Oh, okay, okay, so you need us to come to you??

Keller: ?I?m in the Rosh Ha?ayin area now, if you come to me in Karkur in two hours you?ll get both coffee and all the animals.?

Caretaker: ?Okay, let me just speak to Yigal, he?s a little busy, we?ll see if he ...?

Keller: ?Dear, for your information, the Haifa zoo wants to come to me now.?

Caretaker: ?No problem, no problem, we?ll come. I?ll speak to Yigal.

Keller: ?Good. ?Bye, sweetheart.?

Caretaker: ?Yalla, ?bye.?

That evening two Siamese water snakes and two young alligators joined the display at the Nahariya zoo.

Legendary trapper

Aryeh Keller is a great expert on reptiles, after years of being the assistant of the legendary Heinrich Mendelssohn, the founder of the zoological garden at Tel Aviv University.

?I dealt with reptiles all my life, from age zero, but when I came to Prof. Mendelssohn, I was still a retarded child in the field,? he says in his somewhat brusque style. ?Mendelssohn provided the scientific foundation, thanks to him I am familiar today with all the reptiles in Israel, inside out.? Many of the snakes and alligators that he catches spend time in the zoological garden, at least as a way station on their way to being displayed in Nahariya.

Keller spent his childhood in Yehud and later in Atlit, or rather mainly in the fields surrounding them. He was one of those kids who comes home with a little snake and a mischievous smile. Already in 1987 he was a supervisor for the INPPA in Sinai; indeed there are few people who can compete with his experience and his network of contacts, certainly in the area of reptiles and how to catch them.

There is a reason why over the years he reached the very top, and also holds the title of ?person responsible for snake catchers on behalf of the INPPA.? He has developed unique methods of trapping not only for catching snakes but songbirds and bats as well. He has his own tricks that he teaches his students.

First thing in the morning we spend together, he got a call and, on his own, collected eight vipers in the fields of Binyamina. Two days later, he will be giving a course for snake catchers. ?It?s important to provide an orderly solution for this matter, because snakes get into people?s homes. Not everyone can be a collector of snakes and reptiles, you have to be very familiar with the field. There are about 300 certified collectors in the country, most of them connected to us, and we try to provide a solution for everyone. If someone collects snakes and doesn?t know what to do with them, we?ll take care of them.?

There is almost no species of snake that has not been imported, legally or illegally, to slither about in the Holy Land. ?Cobras, mambas, bamboo vipers,? Keller enumerates some of them, ?very poisonous and very dangerous snakes are imported here, by private snake lovers or travelers returning from the East, but mainly by professional smugglers. There?s always a market for them.?

Israeli law prohibits private citizens from importing or keeping poisonous snakes at home, ?because the public good comes first,? explains the sheriff, but the battle with the smugglers and the growers is endless. ?Sometimes they?re just naive people who don?t really understand,? he says, ?but for some it?s a business. And when you get into this area of smuggling, of crime, you know where you begin, but not where you?ll end up. There are many kinds of problems with the people who deal with snakes. One of them even murdered another collector ?(Harel Hirschtick of Kibbutz Deganya Bet was convicted of the murder of Yaakov Sela, the guru of many snake collectors in Israel, who had an affair with Hirschtick?s mother; the motive for the murder was a financial debt?). From my experience, I haven?t come across anyone who deals with reptiles, including me, who isn?t somewhat weird. Sometimes in a nice way, sometimes it?s a serious disturbance.?

Latest ?hit?

Keller leads the battle against smuggling animals into Israel. There are animals that are not from rare or dangerous species, which may be brought into the country, ?but every single animal has to have the permission of the INPPA, and of course you pay a token fee to the authority and V.A.T. and you need documents, and it?s too much for certain people, so they take shortcuts. In other words, they smuggle.?

The latest ?hit? in the field, according to Keller, is red-eared turtles. ?This is a swamp turtle,? he explains, ?which is very aggressive and dominant. You release it into water sources, it will kill everything around it and then remain alone. They are brought here when they?re the size of a shekel coin, they grow to 20 or 30 times their original size, and in the end people release them into the wild. Those red-eared turtles are a plague. Children raise them ? for them it?s neither a fish nor a snake, but a cute little turtle, and then when they grow they throw them into rivers, fish pools, everywhere. And they survive.

?Those who take shortcuts only bring a few shoe boxes in from Turkey, where the red-eared turtle costs maybe NIS 2, and bring them to Israel, where it costs NIS 20, and on 1,000 tiny turtles the traders make NIS 18,000. Tens of thousands of these turtles are brought into Israel every year. I catch them in packages of hundreds, and recently I caught 1,200 in one shot. Many turtles are also smuggled here from Florida, the soft-shell turtle, which is a cousin of the Israeli turtle. There?s a good market for them, too.?

What else flows in?

?Aside from the reptiles, there?s a lot of smuggling of parrots, regular smuggling of monkeys, of mammals. The annual loot comes to thousands of birds, dozens of squirrels, snakes ? there is virtually no animal that they haven?t tried to bring into the country. There?s also a small number of tiger cubs. There was one flight attendant who smuggled tiger cubs for a living. There are tourists coming from the Far East who end their trip by smuggling several animals in their pockets.?

Let?s say you?ve returned from Thailand with a little monkey, to whom would you sell it?

?Usually they know exactly to whom to transfer it, and if they don?t know, then they come in to find out ? and then they get to me.?

Apparently, Keller?s comments conceal a hint of another kind of information source in his complex intelligence network. In any case, Keller is a one-man band, and his battle against crime is complex indeed: ?First of all, we receive initial information, and then I locate the target, ascertain information with the police intelligence coordinator, coordinate positions with the police, gather intelligence prior, get a search warrant in court, and join the police on the ground. I invite the team, mainly detectives. We arrive and say, ?Hello, sir, we have a search warrant here ...,? and usually the perpetrator already knows why we?ve come.?

And that?s just the beginning: ?And then I take testimony on the spot, I do the investigation. After we catch them I send the animals for rehabilitation, and deal with the rest of their lives. At the same time I am in effect the investigator in a criminal case, as well as the chief witness for the prosecution, and in effect the actual prosecutor in court. You don?t have to be a lawyer in order to be a prosecutor, it?s enough to be familiar with the material, and I am.?

The plague of illegal trade in animals is spreading among all the social classes. From amateur mule breeders in poor neighborhoods up to the highest income brackets. Keller: ?Just for your information, how much does a pair of palm cockatoo parrots cost? How much should an incubating pair cost? $100,000, habibi. And these parrots don?t talk. I?ve caught these smugglers, of course. It?s for people who order them specially, they have this obsession, and are very wealthy people. Some of it is legitimate money, some of it is black market. Is there any shortage of billionaires here who will spend NIS 100,000 on a pair of these cockatoos? It?s the wealthiest 1/1,000th of the population who are involved in this. They also pay for the entire smuggling route; there are professionals who do the work for them and they get the merchandise delivered to their home. To Savyon, to Kfar Shmaryahu, to Herzliya Pituah. To them it?s a sport, but to me it?s a crime! But lately there has been a steep decline in this area.?

Why a decline?

?Because of avian flu. The millionaires are afraid of catching it.?

Ivory scare

Keller covers long distances all over the country with his green Isuzu, and in the city, too. On the way to his favorite hummus place in Jaffa, a way station before he goes in to arrange something in the neighborhood police station, he slows down near a shop that has two huge elephant tusks at the entrance? Could it be? After all, trading in wild animal parts is also against the law. ?Here,? he says, pointing at the shop, ?we once conducted a police search. We received information and came here, but it turned out that these tusks are made of wood. A decoration,? he says laughing.

It?s true that he and his colleagues are not always successful, especially when it comes to ivory. ?I received a report about some classy shop in a luxury hotel, where there are a lot of ivory statues. So I did a search there, and it turned out that they are in fact ivory articles, but from mammoth tusks. It turns out that they found a huge area of mammoth herds in Siberia, and they trade freely in their ivory. There is a large market for that. At Ben-Gurion airport we once found a shipment of mammoth ivory worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It comes from Bangkok in large containers. The Siamese do all kinds of work on mammoth ivory: drawings, engravings, collages, and sell it for a lot of money. The problem is that it?s hard to differentiate between elephant ivory and mammoth ivory, because the only difference is in the angle of the tusks. And I?m not a big expert in either elephants or mammoths.?

Did you have any successes with ivory?

?Yes, of course. For example, in an antique shop at the entrance to some kibbutz I found two large tusks. The information came from someone who had visited the shop, reported to us, and we really let the owner have it. We did the same to the woman who had sold it to him ? some woman from Tel Aviv who had connections to the foreign service.?

The alligator breeders, on the other hand, are not connected to any foreign service. Usually they are less established people, like the guy who received a pregnant female alligator as a gift, and managed to give away dozens of her offspring as holiday gifts among the top criminals, before he himself was shot to death. Many of the alligators were found by the police ?(guess who did the work behind the scenes??), but some of the criminals claimed that they had found the reptiles while they were still small on the banks of the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv. Because this is a matter of public welfare and every possibility must be examined, Keller and his friends spent several nights patrolling the banks of the river, flashlights in hand, waiting for the alligator to venture forth in the darkness. It never did.

Keller prefers to stumble here and there rather than ignore any piece of information that comes into his hands, even the most fragmentary bits. Otherwise, how would he have caught a 84-centimeter-long alligator in Nahal Alexander about a year ago, when the rumor of its existence came from an unknowledgeable hiker?

Since he is the equivalent of an elite commando unit in his field, the sheriff is also involved in handling thefts. Or as he puts it: ?I provide a very good solution to the problem of the theft of animals as well. Did someone steal a parrot from you? The police will not solve your problem. I will. They call me from the police: ?Aryeh, they?ve stolen a parrot here, maybe you know something, maybe you can help,? and when they catch stolen parrots they bring them to me, so that I can find the owner. Then I make the connection and return it to its owner.?

This is perhaps the place to mention that illegal iguanas are also handled by Keller, and some of them have been caught, but this is not the case when it comes to piranhas and other dangerous or illegal fish. ?I also catch piranhas if I can,? says Keller, who is quick to praise his colleagues from the naval commando unit, who assist in this area. ?But when it comes to trade in fish ? that is the fisheries department. They do excellent work there in the department. That?s not my field.?

A country of stupidity

Keller emphasizes that it is both possible and permissible to trade in animals in accordance with the rules of the Washington Convention, but it is strictly forbidden to trade in endangered species, even if you represent a zoo. ?That?s the strictest level of the convention, which comes to protect chimpanzees, gorillas, elephants, animals of that kind. But there is also a second level, which permits trade, as in species of parrots and reptiles, but only in their offspring. In other words, it is forbidden to grab a parrot from the tree and to trade in it, but if the parrot was born in some children?s zoo then you can sell it, with a legal document of course. With the documents you have an indication where they come from, who the parents are, how many generations, and then it?s possible to coordinate and keep track of them. As with dogs and cats. Our battle is against the large numbers of people who engage in trade without a permit.?

Keller is quite satisfied with the ?improvement in public awareness? regarding criminal activity involving animals, but he is not always pleased with the severity of punishment. ?The most common range of fines for smuggling reptiles is NIS 7,500 to NIS 25,000. Sometimes there is a suspended sentence, and there have been some who sat in prison for a while, but the law here is still not anchored as in the United States, where it?s a federal statute. There one goes straight to prison for a considerable period of time for smuggling. Here it?s the land of milk and honey and stupidity. Everyone has some kind of a meeting and issues regulations, it?s all to cover their asses.?

Are there politicians who show special interest in this area?

?Oh, we had an excellent lobbyist in the Knesset, but he left in order to take care of his sick father. Omri Sharon. It was in his soul and in his genes. If he hadn?t been an MK, he would have been a INPPA supervisor.?

If I may get back to the mules, there?s something I didn?t understand. What do you do with all the finch nestlings that you rescue?

?The ones that can?t fly I keep in my house in Karkur. I have a four-meter cage, and they stay there until they slowly learn to fly. Sometimes it takes days and sometimes weeks. When I see that the nestling has learned to fly, I release it into the wild. If you?ve taken them and released them when they don?t yet know how to fly, you?ve killed them. So I take care of them in my house.?W