As I became more and more involved in education, it was a one-man department. So I cleaned cages in the morning and the afternoon. Sometimes I would stop at 10:00 and start doin’ the school tours. And then after 2:30 when the school buses left, then I go back and… Read More
And about that time, I was relieved for my keeper duties in the reptile house. But I still kept a working relationship in the reptile house. Maybe there was some prized specimen I still took care of on the side. Maybe these were the reptiles that I used in the… Read More
We did an annual census which was published, the census. That was making sure that we had every animal accounted for by common name and scientific name classified under family. So that kept my fingers in the herpetological aspect of the zoo. Read More
That king cobra fed on those snakes. So the snakes were also the supply food for the king snakes and other cannibalistic steaks. As the technology improved and reptile houses began having humidity control, temperature control and concentration on breeding efforts, captive-bred specimens became the norm where it was rare… Read More
The need to collect from the wild is gone. So these annual snake hunts don’t even exist anymore. You had talked about when you became assistant curator, you still had your regular duties to do. Read More
Were you still doing education work also?… Read More
Does it have a place today or not?… Read More
In the early days of the zoo business, the heating and ventilating systems of the reptile houses was nothing like we have today. They were originally wood-fired or coal-fired and then they banked the fires at night so the buildings were drafty. They were cold. So there was a high… Read More
Well the mortality rate durin’ the winter was very high. So every spring, there was an annual snake hunt to replenish the stocks. You would get the copperheads, the cottonmouth, water moccasins, the timber rattlesnake of southern Illinois and then also watersnakes. But also the king cobra which was a… Read More
Now you mentioned the collecting trips to southern Illinois. Marlin when he was at Lincoln Park did a lot of these collecting trips and then at St. Louis for specimens to bring them back. Jump ahead a little bit. Read More
What’s your opinion of that kinda collecting trip?… Read More
Not well at all. We had a hard time forcing them to attend. And if they did, they wouldn’t pay attention. But with the younger generation of keepers we brought in, they were eager to learn. So your boss was still Moody Lentz. Moody Lentz. And you were learning things… Read More
But what did you pick up from Moody?… Read More
Well first of all, I had known Moody Lentz from childhood days from bringing specimens there. And when I had pet shop, Moody did come out. He loved baby turtles and I always had exotic baby turtles which I got from Trudy Jergens. Yellow-neck and orange-neck, spine-neck turtles and even… Read More
They took him down to southern Illinois and that was written up in the New York papers where the snakes carpeted the Bluffs of southern Illinois and Raymond Ditmars went down there with the people from St. Louis and collected ’em. And pictures of some of those dens are in… Read More
All the rest of ’em were not well-educated. Some of ’em even were supervisor or head keepers only because they had years in seniority. They didn’t have any particular. That was a shock to me that they had now no interest in animals or any sense of sanitary procedures or… Read More
With the old keepers, we almost had to give up and wait ’til they left the zoo as they retired. But we became more active in interviewing the new young keepers so that we would able to screen and hire people that had better background and a professional interest in… Read More
I was gonna say how would those classes go with those older keepers?… Read More
Zoologist became curators and curators went on. We had at one time from St. Louis about 15 zoo directors around the country and I think Lincoln Park had the same reputation. That was Marlin Perkins. That was his philosophy. So when you were assistant curator, you didn’t have to clean… Read More
When you got this promotion, did you have then in mind any career path?… Read More