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
And what was your relationship with these zoologists?… Read More
How important would you say these rounds were to you or to people who aspire to be in a profession?… Read More
I think these rounds were very important to me. I learned a great deal by just being in the animal areas with the animals and with people who took care of the animals. It was an essential part of my day I, before I did anything else on any given… Read More
This is, these are the nets that we use. These are the tools that we use. This is a quirk of this particular ostrich, or this is a quirk of this red kangaroo. And so I got to know some of the animals in the collection as individuals. Give me… Read More
I mean, I had seen great apes, I had seen chimps, I’d seen harangues, I had seen gorillas. One day when I was in the old primate house, the then senior keeper, Roy Hoff said, “Come here, kid, you wanna meet an orangutan?” And so I went behind the scenes… Read More
Now, this was one of my, this was one of the things that I were supposed to accomplish over the course of time, no rush, no hurry, do it with detail, get as much information as you can from the old records as new animals come in, include that information. Read More