About the few months after he stopped doing the show, he wanted to get reacquainted with his family. So his wife and his two sons, we all went to Africa to Tanzania. And around the table in the evening, (laughs) John is very private person and he doesn’t talk just… Read More
Now, speaking of wild animals, are there any animals that you are fearful of?… Read More
He was kicking the chairs off the table, doing a war dance on the table and jumping up and down and making a lot of noise. He was something else. So Johnny came over and he started staring at Doc, put his head down, and all of a sudden I… Read More
And I thought, this is not gonna work. I said, this is gonna be trouble to myself and I jumped to the left. Doc, came through the air and clipped Carson in the face. And Johnny said a couple of expletives. And he said that blank, blank, blank hit me. Read More
If I had had eye contact with Doc, the Celebes ape. He was on my lap. I had to force myself not to look at it. If I had an eye contact, he could have gone from my throat. So Johnny found some grapes. This is the end of the… Read More
Oh, yeah. There was one time, a lot of embarrassing moments. Johnny was so quick. I had a Celebes ape on named Doc. And a Celebes ape is one of the, from a human standpoint, anthropomorphically is one of the worst looking animals around. They are black with a mohawk… Read More
They were sort of worshiped. Anyway, Doc was sitting on my hands with his back to me and I knew the trainer. I’d met Doc once before, but I knew he was fairly young animal at that time. And he stood about that tall and he had this incredible grimace. Read More
And then he said, “Yeah, Jimmy.” He said, “Doc is so bad now with other males “that I tried to castrate him, “but I didn’t have time.” And then they said, “Here’s Jim Fowler.” So I had to go out with Doc. And I knew that I wasn’t gonna put… Read More
And they were really into it. So I knew it was big successful. And I started realizing that Johnny Carson like a good book or a television show or anything else, it was a spontaneous things that happened that were unpredictable. And it was surprising. I have a collection of… Read More
And all of a sudden there were four little wolf puppies, all pulling as hard as they could with his chicken neck in the middle. And the people loved it because it was unpredictable, and they noticed that the little wolf puppies are very competitive. Yeah, but that’s sort of… Read More
But yeah, (laughs) I was just gonna say that he was so quick I had to eliminate and start listening to the audience in the distance. I didn’t pay attention to the audience. I was a straight man for Johnny. Read More
Do you have any embarrassing moments?… Read More
And then they started figuring out what did these kids learn?… Read More
You know what they learned?… Read More
They learned that I enjoyed working with animals and it looked like it was fun and it was exciting. And that’s one of the things that those kids went away with. It wasn’t all the knowledge and the things I was saying, it’s how I acted with the animals and… Read More
And it all came together, and now conversely, why don’t you tell me that story?… Read More
Were there any time when you said, “Oh, my gosh! I know I can work these animals, but look what they did on the show and you know animals being animals. Yeah, well, that’s a good question. I mean, I shouldn’t say that’s a good question. You’re asking… I mean… Read More
And guess what?… Read More
They did a survey and they found out that a lot of teachers were putting that on their curriculum to watch me on the Today Show in the morning where they’re in school. Read More
Well, you’ve got to learn how to have a job, but you also.. I mean, you get specialized in that area so you can have a job in research or whatever. There are wonderful field researchers out there, that are still studying our planet. And that’s very, very important. But… Read More