Zoo volunteers is an interesting part of my life. I think that in the nonprofit world and the zoo is part of that in the sense of the word, the Zoo Society, the various museums and cultural institutions around the country. You can’t get along with a volunteer and you can’t get along without a volunteer. They are the sorta glue that makes an institution accomplish goals that they couldn’t do otherwise because at Lincoln Park, I mentioned earlier, I had civil service personnel departments and constraints. And in order to have things happen, I needed some extra people that I didn’t have any budget money for, and so lo and behold, both at the Children’s Zoo at Lincoln Park and at the Farm in the Zoo, we were able to start getting people who lived in the neighborhood, and who had time and some retired and some not, who said they wanted to participate and get involved in the zoo. The instinct problem, one has in a zoo much more so than say at the field museum or the art institute, which are other cultural wonders, is the fact you had a safety factor. And the Park District being a classic public bureaucracy, the legal and safety departments didn’t want someone hurt. And so if I had somebody helping me, let’s say in the Children’s Zoo, interacting with the rabbit and the visiting child, if the rabbit should scratch somebody that was considered a no-no.
