Another thing that we didn’t touch on, but the first project for the Lincoln Park Zoo Society in fundraising was to develop the farm in the zoo. And at that time it was, I think, a pioneering effort in the city of Chicago, we built a five-acre miniature sort of working model farm in the heart of a bigger urban area. And the story was that there were people in our Zoo Society Board that felt that there were children in Chicago who knew what an elephant and the lion looked like, but they didn’t know what a cow was, and they didn’t know what a pig was. It be 30 to 40, 50 miles to get out into the farm area from the heart of the city, and so we developed this miniature, sorta working little farm next to Lincoln Park Zoo, and we call it the Farm-in-the-Zoo, but it was really the farm next to the zoo. So I think that, that was good, and another thing that I reflected then and reflect now that I was probably most comfortable about was that the day I retired, I turned to my wife, Wendy and said, “You know, I’ve been fortunate.” I said that in all my years at Lincoln Park Zoo, I never had an employee or a visitor killed or seriously injured. And I said considering the fact that a zoo is potentially an extremely hazardous, dangerous kind of place to work in or be around, I felt that I was very fortunate. I think that historically, the last person to be killed at Lincoln Park Zoo is a bear keeper during Marlin’s time. And we had our share of injuries and close calls, but never a fatality.
