Because many times with a bird, when this starts looking bad, it can get bad real quick. So, just looking at the health and welfare of the collection, make sure that everybody’s looking good, talking to the keepers, “How’s this doing?” “How’s that doing?” I was a real task master on cleanliness and organization. So, I was pretty strict about maintaining their keeper areas, their equipment, everything has it’s place and it should be in it’s place and making sure that they’re keeping their exhibits clean. Didn’t like to have all these droppings building up and not being taken care of. And I had a pretty good crew. They were very, pretty soon, they understood what I was trying to tell ’em because they realized they’re gonna have to work twice as hard to clean up something if they didn’t do it on a regular basis. Because of the tropical plants in the building, when I interviewed for a new keeper, one of the things that I looked for was the sensitivity to plants because plants were as much a part of that exhibit as the birds were. So, not only did I want someone who was conscious of the health and welfare of the bird but also the health and welfare of the plants as well because we had a very large investment in horticulture material within this building that had to be maintained.
