Bird Lady

Heidi Fleiss decides on Alternative Energy:

The Hollywood Madam turned Pahrump laundromat owner says she's abandoning her plans to open a Nye County brothel catering to women. With its stable of men, Heidi's Stud Farm would have been the first bordello of its kind in Nevada, where houses of prostitution are legal in most rural counties.

...In the years since, Fleiss has talked about the project a lot -- even agreed to let HBO shoot a documentary about it -- but she never took the first step of submitting an application for a brothel license in Nye County.

Now it appears she never will.

"I think I'm going to put all my property up for sale in Crystal," Fleiss said recently by phone from her house in Pahrump. "I don't want to work so hard ... and deal with all the nonsense in the sex business."

Instead, she is focusing her attention on an alternative energy project she said is "perfect for Nevada."

"That's where the money is," she said. "That's the wave of the future."

Fleiss declined to elaborate on her plans, but she said she has already explored the idea of a wind farm and discarded it as too expensive.

...She's had a pretty bad run of luck there, too.

First she got mixed up in a federal wire fraud case against Nye County brothel owner Maynard "Joe" Richards and might be called to testify when the case goes to trial this spring.

Then a traffic stop in Pahrump a year ago led to drug use and possession charges for which she faces a preliminary hearing in May.

And last month, her former landlord made good on a promise to sue her for damage done to the woman's house by Fleiss' 25 pet parrots.

On the other hand, Fleiss said she has met "a lot of nice people in the community" and feels "really comfortable" there.

Plus, Pahrump is where she discovered the joy of pet ownership. "I fell in love with these beautiful birds," she said. "They'll probably keep me out of prison."

Fleiss now lives in a double-wide trailer on her hillside property in Pahrump. She had the house fitted with elaborate perches on three sides, and her birds have the run of the place.

...There's one other thing Fleiss said she won't part with: Dirty Laundry, the coin-operated laundromat she opened a year and a half ago in a busy Pahrump shopping center.

..."It's always the times when things are really, really bad when there are the greatest opportunities," she said. "Who knows what tomorrow brings?"