I think these rounds were very important to me. I learned a great deal by just being in the animal areas with the animals and with people who took care of the animals. It was an essential part of my day I, before I did anything else on any given… Read More
This is, these are the nets that we use. These are the tools that we use. This is a quirk of this particular ostrich, or this is a quirk of this red kangaroo. And so I got to know some of the animals in the collection as individuals. Give me… Read More
I mean, I had seen great apes, I had seen chimps, I’d seen harangues, I had seen gorillas. One day when I was in the old primate house, the then senior keeper, Roy Hoff said, “Come here, kid, you wanna meet an orangutan?” And so I went behind the scenes… Read More
Now, this was one of my, this was one of the things that I were supposed to accomplish over the course of time, no rush, no hurry, do it with detail, get as much information as you can from the old records as new animals come in, include that information. Read More
As zoologist, did you, or were you required, or did you desire to make daily rounds of your kingdom?… Read More
I couldn’t be kept out of the animal areas much to the chagrin of some of the old time keepers. I made a point of being not only around, but in every area, front, back, up, down, if there was a closet, if there was a basement area, if there… Read More
I mean, we made a conscious effort that people would be cross-trained, that they would know more than how to take care of antelope for instance, or how to take care of the chickens or how to take care of the handleable animals in the children’s zoo. There was a… Read More
Did you find that the zoo had good record keeping?… Read More
A good question about record keeping, the record keeping was essentially non-existent when I arrived at the zoo and one of my first responsibilities was develop an inventory system. There were lots of ledgers in buildings that had either daily notes or scribbles on a page, in a bound volume… Read More
Was this something they directed you to do, or this was on your own?… Read More
Did they conflict?… Read More
Were they in sync with what you were trying to do?… Read More
Les Fisher’s management style was pretty much what Les Fisher’s life has always been, easygoing, friendly, outgoing, everybody’s buddy, don’t make waves under any circumstances, do whatever needs to be done, but do it in a politically correct way. His number two, Jean Harts, was essentially in charge of the… Read More
The strategy developed because I learned, after I ran into the wall two or three times, that the only thing I was gonna do accomplish was to bruise myself. And so I worked with what I had. You have to remember that during this era, a significant number of the… Read More
So to try to implement any kind of written guidelines or instructions for whole areas of the zoo, whether it would be bird, mammal or reptile, just wasn’t gonna work because they couldn’t read, or they were incapable of understanding what was going on. Read More
You talked about your management style then, what was the director’s management style and what was your immediate boss’s style?… Read More
What form did that resistance?… Read More
What was that form of resistance?… Read More
Yeah, the resistance was sometimes it was subtle. Sometimes it was overt. Sometimes it was direct in your face. Sometimes it wasn’t doing things that should have been done just to see what kind of arise they could get out of me. The senior keeper in charge of the zoo… Read More
That strategy kind of developed, or you kind of had that as you were going in?… Read More