The Auditor

Within the environmentally hostile confines of the Berkeley Pit lives perhaps Superfund's most amazing paradox. Its name is `` The Auditor.''

Its genus is Canus, but its species...if indeed there ever were another single dog like it on the planet...would be nothing other than extraordinarius.

This mysterious mongrel has called the 5,000-acre contaminated expanse of the Berkeley Pit federal Superfund site, combined with Montana Resources' active mine permit area, its home since 1986. Ironically, its only help in surviving has come from the compas sion of miners.

And now I give you. The Auditor



As a rule, feeding time around 7 p.m. is the only time The Auditor can be expected to appear in all his unsightly glory. For the rest of his waking hours, he roams the vastness of his toxic home in elusiveness, sometimes miss ing for weeks, even in the dead of winter. In these instances like a drunk disappears on a bender, the small group of people who care for the dog have feared his death more than once. But just as he got his name, he's always shown up.

And the water here is lethal, should you suppose he walks on that.

In 1995, the deceptively calm surface of the Pit infamously claimed the lives of 342 snow geese that made the mistake of a migratory stop.

`` It's unbelievable how it could live in a place that's supposed to be so toxic,'' says local veterinarian Ed Peretti. `` He's one tough dog, I'll tell you that.''


Dog spends 16 years at toxic waste site,comes out looking like a sheep..now you tell me...