We were very fortunate and we had a great beginning because this fellow that ran the bird park, E.X. Lewis, had brought back a bunch of cassowaries, and cassowaries, when they’re as big as chickens, as tiny chicks, are very hardy, and light and simple to transport, and not dangerous when they’re only a foot and a half, two feet high. And he’d brought, when I began at the zoo, four cassowaries were present then from the birds that he had brought back between 1935, and he made three trips, extended trips to Southeast Asia on ships. And so the birds could have come any time between ’35 and his last trip in ’40. So there were four adult cassowaries, two of which laid eggs. One more frequently than the other, and they were all kept separately. They were kept in the old lion cages. The lions were disposed of after the elephant Daisy was killed in ’33. And when the cassowaries were brought in, they were these line cages.
