Interview 40106 – Caption Index: 325
What was your impression?… Read More
What was your impression?… 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 Axhi 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
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 Geneser. Yeah. 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
What are you doing with bears?… Read More
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. I said, the samples, I just, I said, I couldn’t believe the size of samples they keep in the museum. Read More
And then he was convinced that it was geologically, correct?… Read More
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 he’d come over to me, you know, he’s still looking at it, Chris. He said, there’s something not right about that… Read More
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 bear grottos with Ross behind me, you across the moat. Read More
You know, he liked it. And then we did the, the outside. I think we gunnited the outside Grottos maybe the next year. And George was like, there was, I remember this, there was this one rock, and George was really into the geology. I had to go down to… Read More
And then Axhi 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 up the butt of the bear who was lying there. And she came blasting out of the tunnel and he became… 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 Axhi said, “Mr, Chris, new den will not work. Too different!” he said. “New den will not work. Read More
They, they had two females and they had, was it Ross?… 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
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
Milwaukee. And Matter said Chris, he said, you gotta, you, you have to make it easy for the keepers 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
Rabb 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, mein Junge. And so, you know, he had this kind of fantasy of who I was… Read More
And he said there were people that had worked in the agriculture minister, they had some connection to animal work, but they weren’t qua. He said, you were the only one that had the kind of qualifications that we were looking for. You had the degree, which was good, you… Read More