Terry Thompson knows all 56 of his animals by name. There is Solomon, the white tiger. There is Jocelyn, the pregnant tiger. Elsa, the lioness cub that puts her paws on the counter to snatch a piece of meat. Simba, the very first lion Terry ever owned, the one he bought as a sickly cub 14 years ago.

It’s October 18 and fall has begun. The temperature barely breaks 60 degrees and the leaves on the oak and maple trees surrounding Terry’s farm are about to turn a riot of red, yellow, umber, and purple. Terry has seen many seasons on this farm. He’s 62 now, and stands five feet and five inches—a stocky, unkempt figure with a barrel chest, shaggy forearms, and a beard and mustache going gray. The last few years have not been easy ones. To put it bluntly, his small, isolated world has collapsed and the stress has become too much to handle. So he’s made a decision. He steps out of the kitchen door and into the garage wearing only a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and a baseball cap despite the slight autumnal chill. In one hand he holds a handgun; in the other, a pair of blue bolt cutters.

The stretch of gravel and grass running out from the garage looks more like a tunnel beneath the Roman Colosseum than a small Ohio farm. Fifty-six animals—including wolves, black bears, mountain lions, monkeys, leopards, lions, and tigers—loll and pace inside more than 30 cages that line 270 feet of the driveway, all the way out to the decrepit barn.

The animals watch as he approaches the first cage in the garage. They know Terry, know that he sometimes talks to them, likes to step up to a bear’s cage and put his face against the fencing for a kiss. He unlatches the first door and pulls it open. He kneels to the ground, eye level with the tigers, and pinches a piece of chain link fence with the bolt cutters. He snips one wire. Then another. In a minute or two, there is a gaping, three-foot hole. He moves to the black bear, wolf, and grizzly cages outside. He opens the...