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PHOENIX — Spurred into action by a spate of recent incidents, lawmakers hope to take the first steps today to once again make it illegal to sexually abuse animals in Arizona.

Rep. John Nelson, R-Litchfield Park, said the lack of any laws took some people by surprise when a Mesa deputy fire chief was arrested earlier this month after witnesses said he had been trying to have sex with a neighbor's sheep. It turned out that Maricopa County sheriff's deputies could charge Leroy D. Johnson only with disorderly conduct and trespassing.

Nelson wants to persuade the House Committee on Counties, Municipalities and Military Affairs to make it a felony to have sexual contact with any nonhuman vertebrate. Violators could face up to a year in state prison.

Nelson's bill would also impose a 2 1/2-year prison term on anyone who forced someone else to have sex with an animal.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, saying he was alarmed about the lack of any statutes, demanded that lawmakers fix the problem or he would take the issue directly to voters.

Besides the sheep incident, police report two dogs have been victimized recently.

A missing 8-pound poodle was found this past weekend after it had been sodomized, Phoenix police said. And police in Southern Arizona seized a greyhound mix near Three Points, saying it had been both physically and sexually abused. See story, Page B1.

Nelson said he was told the laws against bestiality were removed from the books in 2001 when legislators voted to repeal what were termed "archaic" sex laws. But that does not appear to be the case.

The laws repealed in 2001 included statutes criminalizing cohabitation, adultery, committing lewd and lascivious acts, and something that literally read "the infamous crime against nature."

All of those laws specified crimes committed with other humans. In fact, during the 2001 hearings, one legislator said the statutes barring sex with animals actually disappeared in 1977.

Alfredo Gutierrez, who was a state senator in 1977, said he recalls the change as simply a function of cleaning some old laws out of the criminal code. "There was not some sort of pro-bestiality lobby," he quipped.

Whatever the case, Nelson said, it's time to bring the law back. He said Arizona appears to be in the minority of states that does not make sex with animals a crime.

"That doesn't necessarily mean we're wrong," Nelson said. "But why shouldn't we be in line with everybody else if the rest of the nation thinks it's a problem?"