Yeah, I really do. I think escapes today, first of all, are pretty rare. I mean, in fact it sounds like what’s going on today is that the animals aren’t actually getting out, the public is getting in, which is a shame because with all the open exhibits now, I… Read More
And there was a huge group of people standing in there when we were walking by. And it was Darrell Bones was with me and I turned to him and I said, “Darrell, what’s going on over there?” And so I walked over and I kinda moved my and look… Read More
So I both Darrell and I just walked into the crowd and just said can you step back and step back, call the vets, call the police, can you step back?… Read More
Well now, they’ve got a code green situation at national. And I think in most of those now, so if an animal does escape, there’s a code green and everybody’s alerted, the vets are alerted, the security forces are alerted, and this is, regardless of what it is now, it… Read More
I mean, a branch, a tree, fell on a fence, we got both cheetahs got loose, and that happened a couple of times. We had a Tasmanian devil get loose and get run over on the road, down behind the zoo. At some point somebody found it and we’d been… Read More
But nobody knew it was out in until he came up the hill and got on the main walkway through the center of the zoo. And I remember it was in Small Mammal House and got the word that the tapir was out and I walk out and here’s the… Read More
Always the vets, always the vets, except another interesting story. This was when Clint Gray was vet and they had changed from the CO2 to the 23 cartridge charged guns, which had a much higher velocity, and they had, depending upon what the distance was that the animal was being… Read More
And so they finally agreed and the first time we were gonna let one of the curators use it, it was on some Eld’s deer and, was it Eld’s deer?… Read More
Yeah, it was Eld’s deer. So they go up to the enclosure and they hand the gun to the one of the assistant curators at the time and he fires it. And first, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know whether Clint adjusted the thing wrong or forgot to… Read More
You’ve talked about capturing animals at the zoo that you were involved in escapes at the zoo that you had to recapture animals, did you have any stories about escapes that you were involved with and how it was handled?… Read More
In the initial, you mentioned the initial experimentation at the National Zoo with the capture gun, who was shooting initially?… Read More
Was at the vets who we’re shooting?… Read More
Was it the keepers?… Read More
I think that the people that I work with, including myself, sort of had a natural bend for how to catch these animals regardless of what they were in a manner that wasn’t gonna cause them any damage. I mean, I remember trying to train some of the keepers, like… Read More
And you just go in, shut the door behind you, it’s pitch black, and just stand here for a few minutes until they kinda calm down. And then you started grabbing and you grab whatever you could, and you made sure you grabbed an antler and then you grab them… Read More
And what we want you to do, we’ll pay you 50 bucks is we’ll put a pat on your back and you’re gonna start running and we’re gonna shoot the dart at you.” And I remember I said, “Well, yeah, but you’ve only got the pat on our back, what… Read More
And it really made a huge, huge advancement in the way you manage a collection. With great apes, before you’d have to try to train them to come up and get to you. But half the time you couldn’t do that, you had to get them into a squeeze cage… Read More
Were you just learning on the job?… Read More
It’s interesting question. Read More
Did we learn on the job?… Read More