And they all knew we had Ka Bluey there and I could hear ’em whispering, “Oh, they’re gonna get to keep Ka Bluey. We’ll get to see the koala.” And I have a great surprise, so they came to the zoo and we wanted to show ’em the rainforest and… Read More
I thought they were gonna throw me into the waterbird lagoon. (chuckles) But, no, they were very good about it. They enjoyed it. Read More
Well, from having famous animals, were you ever involved with the zoo in any animal escapes?… Read More
She’d go around town and the little kids say, “There’s Ka Bluey’s mommy.” (Gary chuckling) That’s the way this town is though. I mean, it was just fabulous. And a big success. Every day was like a Sunday. Read More
You’ve heard that expression, a month of Sundays?… Read More
I never knew what that meant until every day was like Sunday. I mean, the restrooms are out of toilet paper. The ice machines run out of ice. The parking lot is filled and has to be cleaned, I mean, and we got no extra money for any of that. Read More
And I put it away and I kept thinking about it. And I think, heck, we’re the world famous Topeka Zoo, we could bring a koala in from San Diego. So I contacted ’em and said, “What’s involved?” And they sent me this, I mean, it was jillions of pages… Read More
We had to do climate control, temperature control, crowd control. We had to arrange to have eucalyptus flown in to Kansas City Airport and have a refrigerated beer truck, Coors Beer truck from Topeka drive over to Kansas City and pick it up, get volunteer drivers to do that. We’ll… Read More
And anybody and everybody who did something was on the K Team. So burger king gave six free meals to the keeper, and Land Rover, Ford will provide a car for the keeper. I mean, just all this stuff, it was just tremendous. McDonald’s had place mats with the koala… Read More
It was terrific. And Elaine Tu was the koala keeper. And she came in ahead of time, examined everything, and approved it. She went back and then she brought Ka Bluey. That was the koala assigned to us. And I was so nervous the 30 days he was here, ’cause… Read More
This is the biggest event we’ve ever had at the zoo. And the gorilla won’t go out. We had another gorilla on loan from Omaha. His name was Oscar. I said, “Okay, Let Oscar out.” (chuckles) So they open Oscar door. (Gary mimics swooshing) Oscar went out, what a great… Read More
The biggest crowd I’ve ever had was 14,000 and some. For a little old zoo, the city limit, the population of Topeka is 120,000 or something. That day we had 21,995 people go through the zoo. Somebody said, “Why don’t you round it off to 22,000?” Well, cut in all… Read More
How did you, and when did you think about bringing koalas to the zoo?… Read More
Everything was going so well, I mean, the first building and then, not only did we have the elephants, giraffes, hippos, the giraffes were having babies, and even the second generation, that was great. The rainforest was a huge success. Everybody loved that. The Discovering Apes and the orangutans and… Read More
And it turns around, looks you in the eye, and horns are crossed over ’cause they’re not fused to the skull yet and oh my God, that was just so fabulous. But then she grew up and had babies of her own, so you get into second generation Topeka Zoo-born… Read More
I said, “Let Max out.” And the crowd is there anticipating and waiting. And I said, “Let me let Max out.” And crowd was there and, “Let Max out,” and this is to be continued. Read More
(Gary chuckling) No, they keeper radioed back and said, “Max won’t go out.” (chuckles) What do you do?… Read More
Can you give us a few things in your tenure that were memorable?… Read More
Either that stood out like, oh my gosh or, oh my gosh?… Read More
There’s always something going on at the zoo, yeah. That’s the Simon & Garfunkel song, I guess. ♪ And it’s all happening at the zoo ♪ And it is. I think one of the most exciting things for us was the birth of our first giraffe, which was in 1970. Read More