Pat Sass, first woman keeper, need one say anything more. She broke the barrier. She broke the barrier in many different ways, but she allowed other women who followed her to assume a keeper position, a position of importance. Joel McHale, the senior keeper in a birdhouse was a full-time animal keeper and the senior keeper and a full-time animal dealer. Joe McHale taught me some things too, because when Joel McHale went away, he frequently asked me to take care of his animals, which were in the basement of his home in Rogers Park. And Joe could get things that other people couldn’t get. And I vividly recall penguins in his coal bin that were on their way to somewhere else, a banged wolf that lived in his basement that was on its way somewhere else. I remember one Saturday night, he banged on our door and said, “I got an animal I wanna show your girls.” And he brought in about a of five-month-old wild-caught cheetah that was as tame as anybody’s dog that you’ve ever known and brought it into the apartment.
