At that time, the buying and selling of animals was a cocktail party event. It was more fun than it was science. And during the cocktail party, you take turns getting up at a microphone and reading off your surplus list. And the other zoo directors of the audience would… Read More
What year?… Read More
Well during my role as curator, the assistant director Henry Sanders got sick. He spent some time in the hospital. He bought all the food for the animals, the fish and ran the commissary. When he was out sick, Moody had to take it over and Moody wasn’t really happy… Read More
Would you mind helpin’ me with the commissary?… Read More
Would you mind helping me with the fish?” So I started buying fish. At that time, there was a big seafood company in St. Louis. We were buying our frozen fish every week. I forgotten. 10,000-pound lots of feed. We had a walrus, sea lions, all the penguins. Well I… Read More
We have bones, skulls, furs, all kinds of things that a teacher can come like a library and take out one of these plastic boxes. A mammal box, bird box, reptile box they can take to their school, use it in the classroom and then bring it back. So that… Read More
How did that come about?… Read More
Was Marlin still director and what was your title?… Read More
I’ve watched our library grow and develop at our zoo. It was a resource for me as I developed. I went to it often. We established a library in our education department. We made it available for staff at any time, but we also made it available to teachers. It… Read More
When I worked as a keeper at the reptile house, we were also responsible for keeping the hospital clean. We didn’t have a full-time veterinarian. He only came one day a week, four hours a day. Four hours in that one day. Any animal died, we had to go pick… Read More
Let me see it. Lemme see that,” and he would diagnose it. Write down his autopsy form and he say, “Okay, throw that away.” Well we’d cut off the head and save the skull. Sometimes if it was a giraffe, we’d saved the neck bone. We’d save the femur from… Read More
And that picture by the way is used in St. Louis publications quite often. I went out, took pictures around the zoo and I brought ’em back and he critiqued them. He told me which ones were good, which ones were bad composition. I didn’t have the light in the… Read More
You get photo credit on that picture of Marlin when they use it?… Read More
No, I don’t think so. To this day, I don’t think I have. By the way, he did have an eight-by-10 copy made and wrote on it with a felt pen, “To Charlie Hoessle, a great zoo professional who I know will get even better.” And I have that somewhere… Read More
How important do you think a library is to a zoo?… Read More
We have people studying behavior. We have programs going on in the Galapagos, Africa, India, all over the world. All of these things are a role of the zoo. But also doing these good things help in fundraising. Fundraising not only for conservation and for our research but fundraising for… Read More
Can you tell us a little about your talk in continued education, that the story of Marlin giving you a camera and how that came about?… Read More
In the early ’60s which would’ve been about ’64, Marlin called me up to his office and he said, “I want you to build up a slide. When you give your lectures, you should be able to have a slide collection to enhance your lectures. So I want you to… Read More
I wanted to start a docent program at St. Louis. With Marlin’s support, we started a little docent program and I trained, I personally trained the docents and Jerry and Bob Fru and Mike Fleig helped me with classes to make them knowledgeable, to help take some of the school… Read More
And education is probably one of the most biggest components of the zoo. We say in St. Louis there are four basic components of a zoo. Recreation is number one. People come to the zoo to have fun. Education, number two. You educate ’em. They don’t mind being educated. So… Read More