I think Bushman was certainly, early on in my zoo career, the number one patient that I got involved with because of his fame and his stature, he was physically an exciting animal. If he wanted to come and move in his cage from the back toward the front, and you were standing there at the bars, you instinctively stepped back, there’s just something scary about the big guy. And he, as far as I was concerned, never did anything to me because I never gave him the opportunity to do anything to me. I can reflect back in my years of practice, I was bitten and scratched by an awful lot of dogs and cats over the years, and nothing major, but just part of the work. But at Lincoln Park, somehow I either was scared, or doubly careful, I just look back and I don’t think I ever was hurt during my years as a vet or administratively at Lincoln Park. And Bushman surely would have physically done me in if he’d had an opportunity. And so whenever we worked around him or with him, it was with an understanding that he wasn’t a guy to fool around with. The media enjoyed him because he at times somehow picked up the habit of taking some feces and throwing it at the photographers or people who would be in the back run area behind his cage, and they just made him a media star.
