(Bill laughing) I’m gonna say, no, I don’t remember that. (Mark laughing) But it would have been, we had a Komodo dragon, and I’m assuming that that’s the animal they’re talking about. We used to feed them rabbits. In fact, it reached a point where we didn’t realize this, but… Read More
Well, I mean, most of the time, we would try to create break any animal that was gonna be moved, whether it was within the zoo or whether it was outside of the zoo. Read More
And crate breaks mean?… Read More
Means you set the crates up, you get the animal used to the crates so that he’s not afraid of it or she’s not afraid of it. So they go, we feed them, they go in every day. Now we close the door on them beforehand. And so they’re in… Read More
Or even if you’ve got to go in, if you want to get them into a squeeze cage, it’s the same thing. You get them programmed to go in there and nothing happens. And they learn, they can go in, they get fed, door’s close, and then when it’s time… Read More
Dart them. And even then we gave them the antagonist, the female went in without any problem, the male wouldn’t, he just stood up and just stood there and we’re pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling, and we finally, finally get him into the crate, drop the door, we… Read More
Are those the kinds of techniques and things that you would impart on keepers for things that you learned?… Read More
Were there things about handling animals that you tried to, techniques or principles that you tried to impart and what are some of those principles?… Read More
But we’d never dropped the doors. Good point to look learn. We’d never drop the doors. So in goes the male, not a problem, and we hadn’t dropped the door on him because he was in, and in goes to the female and the door jams because she evidently twisted… Read More
And I’m looking at this thing and I’m thinking, “This is gonna be disaster. We’ve got this big ceremony to everything coming up and we’ve got these two rhinos that now we got to try to get them in and they wouldn’t go in. So we ended up having to… Read More
By knock them down, you mean?… Read More
Would you say there were different techniques for different types of animals that you learned for grabbing or handling them?… Read More
Yes. I mean, there was a certain technique on grabbing certain primates and how you held them behind with their arms behind him. And that pretty well contain them. Cats, we’d never grabbed. I mean, we’d always net. hoofstocks, same way. We’d almost always either just get them confined in… Read More
It was sometimes tough and then sometimes even with the capture gun, we couldn’t get animals moved. And we had a situation. In fact, I gave you a picture of us trying to get that rhino out of the crate. It took us forever to get him in and then… Read More
So we had crates built, we set the crates up at the top of the yard. And this was a month before the pandas were supposed to, actually a little bit more than a month because they were doing some work inside on the inside of the exhibit for the… Read More
And the door opens from the inside of the building and out comes to Jaguar. And I wasn’t even paying any attention ’cause I was talking to somebody until I heard this woman say, “Look, he’s creeping up on him.” And I turned around and here’s the Jaguar right behind… Read More
So we really were fortunate. I think back in those days there was a lot less, I mean, yeah, we were cognizant of having to make sure that all the gates were locked and the doors were secured, but there was a lot of laxity. And I think I was… Read More
We were able to go in and net it, but again, just really fortunate. Read More
And as soon as the people stepped back and they weren’t being fed anymore, the mother just turned around, two cubs followed her and went back down around behind the bear enclosure, but we didn’t know where she was. And so somebody had to go down there and find out… Read More
And it was again, “Okay, step back, this isn’t,” and they were saying, “No, no, she’s got my cooler. I mean, it’s great, can we stay here?” “No, you can’t.” And as soon as they went back, the mother grabbed the cooler, went back into the exhibit with her kid. Read More