Interview 2817 – Caption Index: 261
And I think we took pretty much every species that they had available. Now, you had mentioned Front Royal and wanna kind of hit on that. Read More
And I think we took pretty much every species that they had available. Now, you had mentioned Front Royal and wanna kind of hit on that. Read More
Number one, what was your involvement in Front Royal?… Read More
And can you give us kind of this history of the place?… Read More
And we’d already pointed out that there was a major problem with the dorcas because we were losing calves from specific females that had been bred to specific males because they were so closely related. Kathy took that information and ran with it. And I know Horsely was really angry… Read More
I don’t think that we ever had any major issues with working with the research people and especially with Front Royal, CRC, we worked with them pretty closely, especially with some of the small mammals and with a lot of the hoofstock. Now, the research collection had their own animals… Read More
After their research was done, did that come to the collection then?… Read More
AI meaning?… Read More
I’m sorry, artificial inseminations. And so that the the vets and the research staff were heavily involved in that. So yeah, it was, I think those two animals were very well attended by pretty much everybody, including our public relations people, FONZ, the Friends of the National Zoo because they… Read More
So there was a good working, I’ll say, was there a good working relationship between all these various departments, and forgetting the pandas, how did the research and veterinary, how did they intermesh with the animal collections during your time?… Read More
Well, we tried very, very hard to get the research department to work with the collection. And actually it wasn’t that easy because they had their own research work that they were doing. And we had a lot of issues that we wanted them to look at, especially stereotypic behavior,… Read More
Yeah, in fact, I’ll never forget, she had built a nest and one of the keepers had gone in and cleaned it up ’cause he didn’t know what it was. And I had to stand there in front of 15 microphones and try to explain what had happened and that… Read More
Did you have to coordinate these various departments, research, veterinarians, your animal management staff regarding the pandas, I mean, they’re all working together?… Read More
Yeah, because we had, I mean, there was a huge input on the part of the research department with Devra Kleiman. There was a huge input with the vets because one that they were incredibly important animals and that they had never been maintained in the National Zoo. We sent… Read More
How important were they to the zoo and to the zoo visitors?… Read More
Well, we were completely swamped for many years, visitors would come in from all over the place just to see the pandas. I mean, to the point where they’d bring busloads of people in, they’d jump off the bus, they’d run over and they’d look at the pandas they run… Read More
And I think the longest any of those cubs lived was I think, four days. And so it was a major problem and a major disappointment. Read More
Did you have to deal with the media or was that for the staff?… Read More
What was your position at the zoo?… Read More
I was a mammal curator at the time. I remember going up there. It was funny because, and maybe it was Nixon’s wife, but I think it was, honestly, God, I think it was Carter, but anyhow, but Horsley was the general curator at the time and he was late… Read More
And we’re still expanding. Read More