I don’t think I ever had a dangerous situation that I can recall in the years that Marlin was there, and I worked around the collection. We had dangerous animals to work with, but I was never in a position, in the Old Cat House and the Lion Hose, when we’d be roping the animals and bringing them to the front. We had an assistant director there for a while named Lear Grimmer, who was a character, both as a person, but also a good animal person. And I was comfortable that the various curatorial staff people and Lear and Marlin that they would handle whatever needed handling. As I mentioned, I had this phobia about snakes as a city kid and certainty, I was doubly concerned about the dangerous venomous reptiles, and never had reason to have to get them, that was Marlin’s job, or Lear, or some of the people in the Reptile House. I think I can recall vaguely only one time that I had a, what I considered a really close call and the timeframe, I’m not sure, it probably was either when I still was part-time or when I was at the zoo, I don’t know. But I was horsing around with one of the chimps and we would, of course, enjoy the game of they’d come to the front of the cage and you’d like to scratch their back just like you do with some of the big cats in the Lion Hose through the bars. And this one chimp that I thought I’d had a rapport with and could get away doing that, all of a sudden grabbed my finger and then grabbed my hand and pulled my arm in through the bars, it was in the outside cage there at the Old Monkey House.
