Critters good, bad and downright ugly

When she was a little girl, Karla Majewski dreamed of someday working with monkeys. “Looking back, I think what I really wanted was a little brother to play with,” she says with a laugh. As the founder of Pacific Animal Productions, Majewski can now count monkeys among her playmates, as well as a couple hundred other exotic animals, some of which she’ll be bringing to this year’s L.A. County Fair.

Sure to be one of Majewski’s more popular draws is Gabby, the capybara. Native to the Amazon rain forest, capybaras are the world’s largest rodents. A herbivore (“capybara” translates to “master of the grass”), Gabby tips the scales at 130 pounds. “She looks like a guinea pig on steroids,” says Majewski.

Less adorable are the exotic creatures that audiences can interact with, should they be so inclined, in Majewski’s “Good, Bad & Ugly” exhibit. These include African scorpions (considered good, Majewski explains, because they eat insects that can damage agricultural systems), giant millipedes (good because their decompositions help soil) and hissing cockroaches (“essential to the food chain,” says Majewski, somewhat unconvincingly).

And the bad? Mosquitoes, vectors of West Nile and other nasty diseases. “The mosquito part is not interactive,” Majewski hastens to point out. “So please don’t bring ‘em!”

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- Pauline O’Connor

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L.A. County Fair, featuring horse racing, concerts, carnival rides, fireworks, exhibitions and food: the Fairplex, 1101 W. McKinley Ave., Pomona. Opens 11 a.m. Friday. Runs Wednesdays through Sundays. Ends Sept. 30. Hours, admission prices vary. www.lacountyfair.com.