Well, I, no, certainly there were things that I wanted to do and it had to start when I became director, I had to start a good collection. We had a lot of, of a really interesting hoofstock, you know, a big duiker collection, a lot of different species of… Read More
And so, you know, one of the things that we developed pretty early on was a philosophy of not simply having a postage stamp display collection, that where you had a pair of animals or a trio, or, you know, or four animals or whatever, but to develop breeding groups… Read More
Well, I, no, I would agree with that. It’s not that I’ve got anything against PhDs. I don’t. You know, I mean, along the way I picked up about three of them myself, but you know, honorary. And we’ve got, you know, we’ve got on our, in our, in our… Read More
It’s not good for the, you know, for the profession. And it’s certainly not good for the individual animals because you don’t know and you make mistakes. That’s how, that’s how a lot of mistakes are made. I, you know, there are, if you look around late in the history,… Read More
But I, I’ve got some very strong opinions that, that everybody ought to start out getting their hands dirty and working and sweating, and get to know the animals and know the animals personally. It’s not that you can’t, you know, get an advanced degree and do that, or, you… Read More
And there’s a fair number of zoos where that simply isn’t the case, where there’s veterinarians are only allowed to touch clinically ill or injured animals. And that’s wrong. You become director of the Omaha Zoo. Read More
One of the things that I think, you know, because as we developed and we came along, we’ve taken a lot of students and maybe we touch on that and then a little bit later on, but you know, we’ve taken a lot of over the years, a lot of… Read More
And you’ve got a pretty good handle whether this individual has a work ethic or not. And whether this individual’s got a passion, you know, a fire in their belly. And I think the passion and the fire in their belly is really important, and a work ethic. Some people… Read More
Have you dealt with this as a zoo director?… Read More
And how does, how could zoos potentially correct this kind of thing or is there a matter of concern at all?… Read More
But you know, the paperwork and the budget and all of that, those were just things that you did in order to be able to do the things that were fun. And the animal part of it was fun. So I always kept my hand in, even, you know, when… Read More
Now, what were you looking for in curators?… Read More
What kind of skillset?… Read More
Well, I think, yeah, certainly a work ethic, but some, some animal experience. And I guess probably the most important thing is, is a passion, a fire in the belly for animals. I get really nervous. I get really nervous around people who tell me how much they love animals. Read More
Are there training or upgrading?… Read More
What were you thinking about?… Read More
Well, I was hands on because in the early days you didn’t have any, you know, you didn’t have any choice. You had to participate in, you know, in the, you know, even as director, you know, there were times when, when you had to participate in the care and… Read More
Obviously the staff is growing. Yeah. Read More
How did you develop the curators and the staff?… Read More
And he said, he’s laying in the middle of the floor in the hay curled up. I said, okay. You know, because I’d learned that you better come look. When he said you better come look, you better come look. I went out. And there was, it look perfectly normal… Read More