I think a couple of things, a couple of things occurred during my career that were purely opportunistic. One of them was I wanted to go South America. I had read all of the early natural historians. I had read Bates. I was aware of the work of Beebe at… Read More
And I think it came with a little more money. I applied to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia for a grant to undertake a trip to south America, to look at small mammals, but particularly those small mammals that are generally referred to as edentates or xenarthrans or the… Read More
Gail was with me the whole time in Argentina and part of the time in Paraguay, because we had two small children that were needed to be taken care of by a family member during our absence. And I really, I really fell in love with the land, the people,… Read More
Now, at some point you said, reptile and trust, you’re gonna be the mammal guy. You developed this interest in edentates. Read More
And how did that get started?… Read More
I had an exceptional amount of freedom. I mean, any errors that I made were mine to make, I was essentially given a free hand with everything, from record keeping, to diets, to the management of a collection, to a more limited extent to who worked where and when, which… Read More
It was a Sunday afternoon. The zoo was full of patrons, something needed to be done. And my first inclination was I have to get that baby camel out of there. If the mother has mastitis, she’s never gonna let the baby nurse. And so I talked to the keepers… Read More
That’s not part of our job description.” I said fine, I said, “But I think we ought to take her.” And they said, “Well, you can’t do that without calling the assistant director.” I said, “Okay, I can do that, but we’re gonna take it. So get ready guys.” So… Read More
And one of the old time sometimes, or tribune photographers showed up and said, we want a picture of you and the camel. And so I fed the camel and they took a picture and it showed up on the front page or the back page or whatever page of… Read More
And did he essentially, or you know, it sounds like you had a lot of freedom, but did he give you the freedom?… Read More
Did the upper management essentially give you some general guidelines and then go do what you wanna do?… Read More
Did you have a lot of freedom?… Read More
Did you bump heads in philosophies?… Read More
Did or was he happy to have you there and a new era was being issued or did he expect you to fall in step with the rest of his zoologists?… Read More
The then general curator, George Irving, was an interesting guy. You have to understand that this was my first job. I was literally beside myself with joy that I had this position. I went to work a week before I should have, and he made it perfectly clear to me… Read More
I think my relationship was really good. Eddie (indistinct), who was the zoologist in charge of reptiles and the reptile house later to become curator. He really was my mentor. Eddie kind of took me under his wing. In fact, in the beginning, we lived in the same apartment house. Read More
We could share that information. We could share that excitement with each other. And I also knew that if I was ever gonna make a mark in the zoo, that it had to be with mammals, Eddie was par excellence in terms of his ability, his intuitive knowledge with reptiles… Read More
You’re the college kid. Read More
What was your read, did they all have the same, did you all have the same responsibilities in your different areas?… Read More
Did they all have the record keeping, et cetera?… Read More