Back at the ranch, all's quiet

LOS OLIVOS, Calif. - The gates to Michael Jackson's fabled Neverland Ranch swung open Thursday to reveal a shell of the fantasyland the boy-man had created in his heyday.

Gone was the zoo with its elephants, tigers and giraffe. The exotic snakes had long since slithered away, and the amusement park rides had been dismantled.

The five-bedroom house, with its gigantic kitchen and media room where Jackson liked to screen his beloved Disney films, were nearly empty. His big-screen TV was gone, only a mounting bracket remained.

There were some traces of the playland that the place had been in its glory days, when Jackson opened it to neighborhood children by the thousands and presided over the ensuing parties as the lord of the manor.

In its empty game room, for example, the door knobs shaped like miniature basketballs, baseballs and soccer balls remained. In a closet in the pool house, sandwiched between the pool and the tennis court, was a bucket of tennis balls.

And on a hill overlooking the house stood the fabled train station - a near replica of the one at Disneyland with its huge floral clock. It was still a stunning site from Jackson's front yard, although the railroad tracks behind were overgrown with weeds.

In the station lobby was a snack bar, and above that, accessible by only the smallest of spiral staircases, was a crow's nest of sorts with a fireplace. There, presumably, Jackson must have stood and watched his trains fill up with children taking trips around his 2,500-acre estate.

The ranch was also the site where authorities alleged Jackson had molested a boy. He was acquitted in 2005 and eventually left Neverland.

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