Bradley Gerwig’s relationship with animals is complex. Over the course of his life, they’ve served as sources of income, nutrition, entertainment, and companionship. Some are nuisances; others are worthy prey. Asked if he considers himself an animal lover, he responds with an anecdote about how, as a high school student, he’d wake up at 4 a.m. and milk 40 cows for $20 a week. He’s raised everything from dogs and cats to lemurs and lions, and he’s a skilled hunter, fisher, and trapper. In the past few years, however, Gerwig hasn’t picked up his rifle, partly because of an aging body and partly because of an evolving conscience.

“I don’t have a desire to go out and hunt and kill anymore,” he says, “I’d sooner just take care of an animal.”

It’s a damp December morning, and Gerwig is at his kitchen table, sporting a T-shirt with a dramatic illustration of three bears cast in moonlight. He talks with a gravelly drawl that makes the word “tire” sound like “tar.” His white hair is brushed to the side, and semicircles of dirt line his fingernails. Seated to his right is his wife, Lurline. They rode the bus together in high school but didn’t start dating until their mid-twenties. “I felt sorry for him,” she jokes between sips of Folgers. They married, had some kids, and in the late 1970s built a small zoo on three of their five acres of property. For them, it seemed like a no-brainer. “We like foolin’ with animals, and little kids love seein’ animals,” Gerwig explains.

Opening a zoo in your backyard may sound like an insane, high-liability undertaking, but it’s not that unusual or legally complex. One of the most important steps in the process is obtaining an exhibitor’s license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Doing so requires completing an application and passing an initial inspection to show that you meet the agency’s minimum standards for care and housing. In other words, your fence must be tall enough, and your cages must be locked.

PETA and other animal law experts have for years been sounding the alarm over what they say is a tragically lax permitting process. “The agency automatically renews it once you get it, so it’s really the only hurdle you have to clear,” says Delcianna Winders, vice president and deputy general counsel of captive animal law enforcement at PETA. “It’s a very inexpensive license, and once you have it, it’s pretty much carte blanche. You can violate the law as much and as seriously as you want, and they will still renew your license year after year.”

Of course, not all zoos limit their aspirations to the USDA’s minimum standards. The big, well-known ones, such as the San Diego Zoo and the Bronx Zoo, belong to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), a nonprofit accrediting organization that sets stringent regulations. Many of these institutions have missions of science and conservation at their core and go to great lengths to ensure their animals live in healthy, enriching habitats.

They’re the exceptions. Fewer than 250 zoos worldwide are accredited by the AZA. Meanwhile, more than 2,000 operations in the United States have active USDA exhibitor’s licenses. They range from traveling carnivals to roadside zoos like Gerwig’s, who says he didn’t even know he needed a USDA license until several years after opening up, when an agency inspector showed up one day and told him so. He invested roughly $10,000 to put up new fences and improve his animals’ enclosures and was then legit in the eyes of the federal government.

Arctic foxes, bobcats, coatimundis, lemurs, and, of course, bears followed. “Lions and bears,” Gerwig says, “that’s what the kids wanted to see.”

At no point in time was the zoo meant to be a full-time job or source of income, Gerwig says. Both he and Lurline had steady gigs with the U.S. Postal Service; he also delivered newspapers in the early mornings. The zoo never turned an annual profit, Lurline says, as the costs of feeding dozens of animals always outstripped the modest income generated by admissions. “If you want to call losing money every year a business, then I guess it was a business,” she quips.

Initially, the Gerwigs’ zoo consisted of mostly farm animals — goats, lambs, pheasants, and pigs — and was akin to a petting zoo. There were some picnic benches and a play area for kids in the front yard. Signs on the animals’ pens offered basic information about what they eat and how long they live.

About a year after opening, Gerwig took a few of his animals to a nearby carnival and set up a small display to promote the zoo. There, he says, an acquaintance approached him with a gift: a lion cub stashed in a cardboard box. They plopped the cute ball of tawny fur in Gerwig’s exhibit, and the kids went nuts. It was Gerwig’s first real exposure to the allure of exotic animals, and his zoo would never be the same. The lion, which his kids named Simba despite it being female, ended up becoming a full-time resident in Gerwig’s backyard for the next 18 years.

During that time, Gerwig steadily grew his collection of exotic wildlife. Arctic foxes, bobcats, coatimundis, lemurs, and, of course, bears followed.

“Lions and bears,” Gerwig says, “that’s what the kids wanted to see.”