They had no idea. One guy said to me, “I’d rather come here than our local hospital. It’s cleaner and better.” Now, let’s digress. The hospital, you said every aspect of the hospital is open to the public and yet people don’t mind it but- I mean, obviously it’s a… Read More
So, when surgery’s being done people could view it if they happen to be there?… Read More
Yep. Read More
We developed first a small hospital building big to deal with all the rehab animals. Because, and by that point, when we built the hospital building, we had not many exotic, I mean, at all, but we had the sheep and we had coyotes and we had our kit foxes… Read More
And we were really lucky that way, but the hospital, people come in and they’re just shocked. They’re shocked at two things. Read More
The thing about hospitals and zoos, I’m digressing, that was the most valuable thing about our hospital was the fact that almost to a person, the first question we would get when somebody would walk into the hospital was, “Does every zoo have a hospital?… Read More
Or what approach did you take to kinda give that visitor a positive or complete experience with them?… Read More
Well, we would build things like we built an exhibit, we built in a weather station that was, so that people would say it was hot. Well, they could get down on the weather station and actually see how hot it was and see rain gauges. But we also built… Read More
Look at that temperature difference. Just simple stuff. I mean, it had to be simple because I didn’t have a lot of money to buy a lot of technology. Read More
You developed an animal care center?… Read More
Well, we weren’t trying to breed. So, they were primarily just making sure that everybody got along in the aviary breeding was not on the agenda. So, in terms of successful people like to see certain ones more. And obviously the bigger brighter ones were always more of a hit… Read More
What were you trying to do?… Read More
Was that your vision, to build the aviary and they will come or?… Read More
Essentially, yeah. Well, I knew they were coming anyway. It was just a place to finally put them because we had built a bunch of behind the scenes holding pens for these things. And I would, but it was nice to be able to actually, and I had a few… Read More
Were certain species more successful of the birds in the aviary than others?… Read More
Not really, we built our first walk-in aviary as part of the Oasis because I could bury that aviary in those tall trees quickly, as opposed to having this giant structure out there sticking up out of the air forever while I waited for the little desert trees to bury… Read More
And so, it wasn’t difficult to get birds for the exhibit?… Read More
They were essentially being brought to you or you were acquiring them besides- No, I mean, this aviary was all native species. So, all we had to do is just sit still ’cause eventually it would arrive from the public. Read More
Well, palm tree is actually fairly easy because the palm trees are shallow eroded by all intents and purposes. So, we were able to bring in mature palms and create a pond. And so, as soon as you have a pond and mature palms, then adding the few other things… Read More
And how was that received?… Read More