Well, I mean, it was a fantastic zoo. I, the fact is, is when I worked at the Smithsonian, I thought that there’s no life after the Smithsonian Institution. You know, when I was taking that job, I thought, you know, nothing, nothing can be like the Smithsonian. And then… Read More
And he had done like lion’s heads and stuff like that. I don’t know if he ever sold his stuff or if he just did it for his enjoyment. But a very interesting man, he was in the Lion House. Joe Zer. Yeah. Read More
So when you first came to Brookfield Zoo, what kinda zoo did you find there?… Read More
Well, my title was Curator of Small Mammals, but I was in charge of the large carnivores and the bears. So I was actually in charge of the, the bear, the bear grottos, the lion house, the small mammal house. And then they gave me the Australia house and, and… Read More
And he was the one when the allies were taking over and the Germans were surrendering. He was the one that spoke to him in German, told him what they had to do. And he was a fantastic sculptor. And he told me about his, his sculptures. And one day… Read More
What are you doing with bears?… Read More
Correct. But George was a, he was kind of a, a, you know, very meticulous and, what’s the word, you know, Fastidious. Well, he was fastidious, but what’s, you know, ex Yeah, forget it. Detail guy. Yeah, he was, he was into detail. Yeah, definitely. So, but you’re the curator… Read More
But anyway, the, and then George got hung up on this one kind of crevice in the rock and dick matter. And the guys were all kind of always chuckling. ’cause he’d come in the afternoon, he’d study, he’d be standing there, he’d be studying it, you know, and then… Read More
And then he was convinced that it was geologically, correct?… Read More
He said, but you look around, look at, look around and find out what’s the natural rock that’s up there. And he says, and let’s talk about it. And so I knew he wanted the black basalt. So I came back and I said, George, the black basalt looks great. Read More
He thought, oh, this is great achievement, Chris, this is good. You know, he liked it. And then we did the, the outside. I think we gun outed the outside Grottos maybe the next year. And George was like, there was, I remember this, there was this one rock, and… Read More
And the, they raised the cubs that year. And so the, the Chicago, it’s the Sun Times, what’s the other one? The Evening Tribune, daily News, Chicago Daily News got on it. And the photographer came out and took a picture of me standing in front of the B Brothers… Read More
And then we waited and like a month later the bears gave birth and we could hear the youngsters in there. And then actually said, I think we need heater. Very cold. You know, it was a cold winter put on the heater and shot a blast of hot air… Read More
And the bears didn’t have any privacy there. So what we came up with was kind of a hemi igloo. It had a tunnel made outta cinder block, cement block, had an expanded half rounded chamber and it was all cemented to the wall. And we put a little heat… Read More
And he used to push this great big cart with the bear, big B five pound buckets of bear food around the zoo and deliver it in the afternoon at character. And actually said, Mr. Chris, new then will not work. He said, too different new then will not work… Read More
I think the male might have been named Ross. And he bred with the two females, but they always lost the cubs. So George thought we needed to improve the inside dens. And he said, I want you to study up on what polar bear dens are like in the… Read More
They, they had two females and they had, was it Ross?… Read More
Milwaukee. And Matter said Chris, he said, you gotta, you, you have to make it easy for the CERs to hose out the crap and stuff like this so you can’t have these angles in it and everything. So then I was learning and then George would come and he’d… Read More
Rab was kind of into the deep management and the science and everything and the challenges of the zoo. And Peter liked me because I had a German name and he would call me. And so, you know, he had this kind of fantasy of who I was or something. Read More
And I came out and I, they flew, flew me out, flew me out in my circulation. My feet was bad for, ’cause my shoes were too small. And I had two pairs of socks on and I bought my, I had an eight millimeter projector and I brought some… Read More