I went in one day and I have no idea what I did or what happened, but he attacked me. He knocked me down. He grabbed me by the, I didn’t think a tapir could open its mouth, but he grabbed me by the knee, shook me like a ragdoll. Read More
Did you ever have an incident with a tapir?… Read More
(Gary chuckles) I did have an incident with a tapir one time. Read More
Gosh, how did that slip my mind?… Read More
(Gary chuckles) I love tapirs. In fact, if you know the movie “2001,” when it starts out and there’s not one word of dialogue is spoken the first 30 minutes of that film. And it shows the dawn of creation. Read More
Yes, and that entire incident was totally my fault. Was not the snake’s fault. Normally it was a quick procedure. You’d pin him, pick him up, put him in a sack, tie the sack, weigh him, put him back in, over. It was so routine every week, he almost went… Read More
So totally it’s my fault. And that’s so often the case in zoo situations, it’s human error or misjudgment or whatever, although the animal frequently gets blamed. But no, in fact, in my last Midwest Research Institute, they gave me the snake and I had Big Red as a member… Read More
National Guard had to fly the St. Louis Zoo to get additional antivenin, because I didn’t have enough stock, and so on. That’s a bad deal. Read More
You were in the hospital for a while?… Read More
I was in the hospital for a while and my left leg, he bit me in the left knee, inside the left knee, my left leg felt like somebody had run it through a meat grinder, then poured hydrochloric acid on it, and was taking a blow torch going up… Read More
So that taught you a little about safety with animals as you transferred it to your zoo people?… Read More
Yes, none, in this zoo, that threatened my life. I did have one in Kansas City, working with the African elephants, as I was taking them out of the barn one day onto the veldt, a sparrow or something flew over and scared Casey, the bull elephant. And he turned… Read More
It shouldn’t have happened. And then we had one incident where a keeper was knocked down by an elephant years ago, but no permanent injuries and did all right. Fortunately, that’s all that I can remember. Read More
And your rattlesnake?… Read More
Well, my rattlesnake bite was at Midwest Research Institute. Now that, yeah, it wasn’t in the zoo, but it was kinda a zoo-like setting because we set up this laboratory with all these snake exhibits that Kansas City discontinued to study the snake bite. And so I wanted to create… Read More
And to visit with him and it was kinda like a long wooden shed and then out back were a few more sheds. And, boy, they was sending orders all over the world, but things were always getting loose. I mean, I had a very distant relationship with him, but… Read More
It’s a great thing. Read More
(Gary laughing) Have there ever been any accidents with animals that threatened your life or the lives of keepers in the zoo?… Read More
Word got out, we had, fortunately, we had our first response team procedure set up that we had, gotta wear a rifle in case we had to, heaven forbid, destroy the animal, or we had to capture equipment with the mobilizing and all this business. And that functioned beautifully and… Read More
It shouldn’t happen to nobody, but it does ’cause zoos are human institutions. There was a biological supply house in Topeka. Read More