Well beginning reptile keeper of the reptile house. The first year on the job, you take care of the turtle pits. No venomous snakes. You take care of the turtle pits. At that time you climb down in these big pools, drain the pools and scrub it with kitchen cleanser… Read More
Besides my collection at the shop, I also had a turtle pen in my backyard which I kept a group of water turtles and land turtles. I had a pool. I had a baby alligator ’bout two feet long. I always had baby alligators and baby caiman. And once in… Read More
And a police car came and it attacked it and bit the tire and got a flat tire. And they had to call the Humane Society. It was 10 or 11 feet long. And in fact, it was 2 1/2 feet long. But the newspaper said 10 or 11 feet… Read More
So I called him up and very reluctantly said “You know, I’m sorry. But that’s my alligator.” And he laughed. He couldn’t stop laughing. He said, “Well come and get it.” So I was able to retrieve it, but it made a lotta publicity in the paper. So you leave… Read More
And what year was that?… Read More
Well by the time I start working at the zoo, I had lost completely divorced from the thought of a monkey as a pet. By that time, I felt that the monkeys should be in a social group of their own with their own kind, not imprinted on people and… Read More
Any good pet shop stories?… Read More
Somethin’ got out and you couldn’t find it for two weeks?… Read More
Instead of keep taking ’em from the wild, we have to take the ones we already have in captivity and putting them in the right social order in the social groups so that we can begin breeding our own and not taking any outta the wild. That was just the… Read More
I’ve been so much outta zoo business, I don’t know of any. I’m not that familiar with animal dealers that are available today. I know there’s some animal shipping companies that ship animals for zoos on contract. I think the hunts are still in business, but I’m not quite sure… Read More
Did that business start to tell you differences on how people approached animals that you might carry on when you started working at the zoo?… Read More
There used to be professional hunters going through Arizona, California and west Texas to collect like the Blair’s milk snake and the Arizona mountain king. There’s less financial attraction there because the captive bred are cheaper than the cost of going out and collecting. So I think it’s added to… Read More
Do animal dealers today within the zoo community, do they have a place and what was their place when you were in a position to deal with them?… Read More
Well when I first went into the zoo business, animal dealers were the only source of animals for zoos. And again, many of the animals that were available to zoos at that time, again were the byproduct of the destruction of their natural habitat. Because in the Third World countries:… Read More
What’s your feeling about that today?… Read More
Does it have a place today?… Read More
Well the big pet chains do have a big collection of reptiles for sale, particularly snakes. They’re very popular in pet shops now. Most of these are captive bred. Captive breeding reptiles is commercial. In fact, many of these snakes are now called designer snakes. They’ve crossed six or eight… Read More
Was the pet business a good business to give you a good income?… Read More
It was a fair income. But there were like 60 mom and pop pet shops in St. Louis area at the time. I bet there were hundreds of ’em in Chicago back in the ’50s. This was in 1954 in the ’50s and ’60s, but they were slowly replaced by… Read More
Lotta pet shops today do sell exotic animals, more in the reptiles. Read More