That’s not what made him have the influence he did. His people skills were what, you know, what caused him to have the influence or enabled him to have the influence that he’s had over the zoo world, people skills. Read More
We start out with light that’s fairly high and get progressively darker as you go through so that your eyes adjust. You know, a seven year old, his eyes, their eyes adjust real quick. Some of us old guys, it takes a little bit longer. So you start out with… Read More
And, you know, we got a 70 foot tall cave in there. That’s because, you know, you’re 15 feet below ground. And then we use the, you know, we used 55 feet of the mountain to get 70 feet. So you look up and 70 feet to the top of… Read More
What worked for you and what would you tell zoo vets who want to be directors?… Read More
Yeah, well, in part, I think that is because as I say, you know, if I had say been lucky enough to get the job in St. Louis, it was very little chance I would have ever risen to the point of being a, you know, being a director of… Read More
Called back the next morning, less than 24 hours later, and he said, you know, what does it take to name something like that?… Read More
And I said half, and he said, I might want to name it after my dad. And as it turns out, he didn’t. So it doesn’t have a name on it yet, but it will have one day. And so he gave a $16 1/2 million in less than 24… Read More
Nocturnal animals are, you know, some of the most interesting animals in the whole world. And nobody does, hardly anybody does nocturnal exhibits and animals well. the Grzimek House of Darkness in Frankfurt, you know, was kind of the leading nocturnal exhibit anywhere, but their doctor, Dr. Professor Grzimek had… Read More
I hadn’t the idea of doing Nocturnals. The interesting thing was that, you know, when I said we’d like to do a desert, you know, the board chairman and whatever said, hey, that’s neat. I liked deserts. And lots of people have been to Tucson or Phoenix and played golf… Read More
The nocturnal exhibit is if you do a, an exit survey, particularly of kids of the, of the, you know, of the number one top thing that we’ve done, the kids particularly will overwhelmingly tell you the nocturnal and particularly the swamp. And we got three quarters of an acre… Read More
I mean, that was kind of the way, cause everybody answered Gene’s phone calls. Cause he’d been a state Senator for about 14, 15 years and head a game and parks. And anyway, bottom line, and we had, we had a, a donation for the desert dome from a single… Read More
Why did you choose this exhibit over, let’s say more popular animals?… Read More
Well, a couple of things. And again, it comes back to personal experiences as far as doing a nocturnal exhibit. Some of the, some of the most interesting experiences that I’ve had, you know, and we’ve had in all of the is, is bumping around in a, in a rain… Read More
And so you say, okay. And so I really liked to take all the credit for that, but I can’t because it was her idea. You opened up– Part of the idea that was mine though in the Garden of the Senses were the sculpture, because, you know, early on,… Read More
They’re absolutely. They, they belong to the, they blogged Kaiser Wilhelm. And after, you know, after Germany fell, why they moved them to the zoo. And so that’s one of the things, you know, we’ve got about 40 bronzes now and are working on more. You opened the Eugene Mahoney. Read More