Interview 2817 – Caption Index: 146
So you were thinking even beyond that, or you were just thinking, okay, this is another job, it’ll be more money or?… Read More
So you were thinking even beyond that, or you were just thinking, okay, this is another job, it’ll be more money or?… Read More
Well, I certainly wanted to continue to move up. And when I’m trying to think of this timeline here, I was offered, Don Deetline was general curator at the time. And Billie Hamlet, I don’t know if you know who Billie Hamlet was, Billie Hamlet worked with Ernest Walker on… Read More
And I had a really difficult decision to make because it was a position with reptiles, which I really liked, but I hadn’t been working in reptiles for years. And I really saw the position I was in as a better position to move up in the administrative aspect of… Read More
Did you see this as a moving up in the organization?… Read More
It was definitely moving up, but no, I didn’t have to at that, did I have to take?… Read More
No, I didn’t have to take a test for that. Read More
But did you say Bill you wanna do it?… Read More
Did you have more responsibilities?… Read More
I had more responsibilities. It wasn’t really a supervisory position per se. It was more of a someone that could talk to the keepers and report back to the head keeper or the assistant head keeper position and that they would come to the leader to issue directives. So I… Read More
And was this a job that was offered to you or did you have to take another test to do it?… Read More
It was a bad day. A week later, Jack DePrato says, “Go in and get get the leaves out,” I said, “I’m not going in that tank anymore, Jack.” He says like, “I never tell you to do something I wouldn’t do.” I said, “Well, guess what, I’m not gonna… Read More
And then he just slowly slid back in. And those are things where you really have to stop and think about what’s going on with the safety issues that you have to deal with. They’d never do that today. I mean, you’d never go in with two crocodiles even in… Read More
Now, you’re kind of moving up as a leader, 1964, you took a title of a job animal keeper leader. Read More
Did your job change?… Read More
When you say something like that happens, all these things floods through your mind and that’s exactly what happened, I think just a split second, it was, “Should I run to the back?… Read More
I’ll never make it if I tried to get over the wall, should I fall down?… Read More
Now I gotta go over the fence.” So I grabbed the fence, facing the crocodile and pulled myself up on the fence and went to pull my leg. My right leg was already laying on the fence. And I went to pull my left leg up and the cuff of… Read More
And he was up standing up in front and the elephant hit him and threw him up in the air against the front bars and the guy just dropped. And I yelled at the elephant and grabbed the hook and ran around the front and stopped the elephant. At that… Read More
So every time you had these close calls, you learn something for your future life as a curator?… Read More
Well, in a sense I did, but with the elephant, there was a totally unexpected attack. I learned at that point, I got off of elephants. I wasn’t gonna work elephants anymore. But I think the closest incident where I came within a hair’s breadth of literally being killed was… Read More