But nobody knew it was out in until he came up the hill and got on the main walkway through the center of the zoo. And I remember it was in Small Mammal House and got the word that the tapir was out and I walk out and here’s the tapir walking up through the center of this. This was on like a Saturday or Sunday, the place was jammed with people and they’re feeding him, throwing popcorn to him and he’s eating popcorn and just strolling up the zoo. And a cop comes up behind me and draws his pistol and I looked at him, I said, “Whatever you do, don’t shoot because what you’re gonna do is tick him off and then there’s gonna be a real problem. So by that time, the vets had come, we got everybody out of the way and we darted the tapir and got him back into his enclosure. I think the scariest thing I ever experienced was, and this was in the 70s, we had a Kodiak bear with two cubs and I was walking up to lunch with one of the research guys and at that time, you’d been there, the upper bear line was a curved with a walkway going all the way around and then going on down to the valley and the back of the bear line kind of opened up on to Olmsted walk, which was the main walkway in the center of the zoo. And it was a glass grassy plot right next to one of the first exhibits. And around that grassy plot was a chain link fence about four feet high.
