Yes it not only helped me with my professional growth with the National Zoo, but it also got me into being able to talk to other directors at other zoos. I mean, I talked to Conway, went out to Denver, talked to Fry Height, and we had sent Oranga out… Read More
I mean, not only did I learn a lot, but I met a lot of people. He would send every one of his curatorial staff, almost everyone, every single year to either the regional conferences or to the primary convention for the AZA. And it gave us an opportunity to… Read More
And I had been after Ben to get me a grade raise and he wouldn’t give me a grade raise at, I mean, just would not do it. And I remember they had a major issue that happened in the graphics department, and the head of the graphics department left. Read More
So I was the primary go to person for the second renovation of the Elephant House and to a lesser degree in the third renovation of the Elephant House. The second renovation of the primate facility, the Monkey House, I earlier work with Miles Roberts on the renovation or the… Read More
I wanna to ask you a question though about under Ted Reed, are you being able to get out and see other zoos and expand your experiential ability to understand about exhibitry and so forth?… Read More
Yes, and I wanna expand on that too, because Ted was really into his ability to recognize the fact that the people that were working for him really needed to get out and see what was going on in the rest of the zoo world. And we were all sent… Read More
And I was sitting in his office with Jaren Horsley one morning, and we were just chatting about odds and ends and the phone rings and Chris picks up the phone and I can only say it verbatim cause I’ll never forget it, it was, “Hi Dave. Yes, yes. Well,… Read More
Okay, bye.” Hangs up the phone, he turns to us, he says, “Well, they just hired a new director for the zoo and it’s not me.” And it was kind of like, “Are you joking?… Read More
Who did they hire?” “Michael Robinson,” who was then acting, I mean was then assistant director at STRI, which was the Smithsonian Tropical Research Center in Panama. And this guy came right out of the woodwork. I mean, he had never been mentioned. Nobody ever mentioned his name and he… Read More
And then Jaren Horsley was general curator at the time. And he got ill, in fact, he got really ill with hepatitis from eating oysters at the Baltimore AZA convention and was out for a little over a year. And appointed me as acting general curator. And during that time,… Read More
Meaning the castle on the mall, which was basically the Smithsonian, the big management area where the secretaries all were. And we wanna talk to Ripley about getting Reed out. And I said, look I’m not here to talk about that. We’re up here to talk about hiring. And that… Read More
I mean a new assistant director at the time. And Eisenberg wasn’t really involved in the running of the animal collection. He was still senior scientist, but he evidently was able to convince the assistant director for animal programs at the time to take me up and put me in… Read More
When they hired the directors at the National Zoo, I worked under, I think seven directors or acting directors in the time I was there, Ted Reed was never appointed. He was appointed, he was never selected by a group of people that would go through a group of applications… Read More
So we decided, hey, wouldn’t it be really neat if we could put up a bunch of of logs with branches on them, fill the pool up and put sloths that the trees ’cause the water, they’re not gonna cross through water. Good idea. We never told Deetline about it,… Read More
The first night, guess what happened?… Read More
Sloths could swim. And they swam over, they got out and two of them got killed because they got on top of the Jaguar exhibits and get pulled, I don’t know if I was gonna lose my job then, but I tell you, Deetline was really, really, really not only… Read More
That was a working keeper, yes. Read More
Okay, and were you able to make changes or do things while you were doing that particular position?… Read More
As a matter of fact, I was in, and in fact, I’ll tell you one really interesting story. I was working with Jack a lot and I was in this Small Mammal Building at the time. And at the time the building was, it was full of animals, but they… Read More
And so all the dirt was muddy and it took us probably a year to get a lot of the exhibits that we thought we needed to get done done. And this one’s Deetline was still there. I’ll tell you this other story ’cause it was an embarrassment, really embarrassing. Read More