Interview 8364 – Caption Index: 194
How did that opportunity first arise that you were able to start thinking about, I’m gonna take people on a safari?… Read More
How did that opportunity first arise that you were able to start thinking about, I’m gonna take people on a safari?… Read More
Well, for the first thing I did was I watched how they treated the animal, how the young man who came to pick it up in the trailer and take it to the games, how they handled the situation. And I let it go for quite a while. I didn’t… Read More
Yeah, I did. I just said, we need to stop this. And we did. Read More
When you were at Rochester, did you start on safaris when you were there or was this later?… Read More
The first time I took a group on a safari was a 1967 and it was in Rochester, New York. I wanted to go over the years and never thought that would be possible, but it became something not only possible, but regular for me over the years, because the… Read More
Yes, it was started before. Read More
And how did that whole, what was the experience?… Read More
You came there, saw this, were unhappy or you were, and then how did you make those decisions?… Read More
Was there a tiger a Bengal tiger called Spirit that you dealt with?… Read More
I believe, I didn’t know the name of it, but Rochester, they had a tiger that the ball team would take out every weekend in a circus cage. And I soon stopped that. They were not very happy when I did that. Read More
Was that something that was started before you had arrived at the zoo?… Read More
In order to get these animals, I was trading with other zoos. I was buying from dealers who passed through many times a year and I was very familiar with the good ones and I didn’t deal with the bad ones. So it was not difficult to make these adjustments,… Read More
How did you know a dealer was bad or a dealer was good?… Read More
By that I guess I’m thinking, to mean they delivered what they said they would, or they didn’t deliver what they said they would, or what differentiated in your opinion, the bad dealer from a good dealer?… Read More
Well, it doesn’t take long for zoo people to get the word around when something didn’t go right, or animals sold to a dealer and he sold it to someone who couldn’t or shouldn’t have had that animal. It doesn’t take long. In addition to that, I knew these people… Read More
Now, when you were purchasing these animals and bringing them in and kind of changing the face of the collection, was this, for your zoo are other zoos, was this something where you would purchase them from animal dealers who had these animals available?… Read More
Would you go to the country of origin or try and bring them import directly?… Read More
Or were you trading with other zoos?… Read More
So you had these improvements you were making, were you bringing new animals into the collection?… Read More
I was bringing in more animals that they’d never been seen in Rochester. Give me some examples. Well, for example, I brought in birds that I could put into a mixed exhibit we called them in those days. We call them now zoogeographic, or we have some other nice words… Read More