And he was up standing up in front and the elephant hit him and threw him up in the air against the front bars and the guy just dropped. And I yelled at the elephant and grabbed the hook and ran around the front and stopped the elephant. At that… Read More
So every time you had these close calls, you learn something for your future life as a curator?… Read More
Well, in a sense I did, but with the elephant, there was a totally unexpected attack. I learned at that point, I got off of elephants. I wasn’t gonna work elephants anymore. But I think the closest incident where I came within a hair’s breadth of literally being killed was… Read More
And he never went back there again. But anyhow, so the crocs in the tank, I’ve got one of the keepers, this older keeper was working in the other crocodile tank. And I went in and I’m sweeping up and there was a couple of palm fronds that was that… Read More
But do you have any other memories you’d like to share of that initial time when you were before you got promoted that stood out when you were in your formative learning years as an animal keeper?… Read More
I remember I had a lot of close calls with animals, a lot. And I was extremely lucky. I mean, we had a bull elephant Asian elephant and a female. And this bull was at an age where he was really getting tough to handle. And I remember we would… Read More
And that single event they said was well worth the trip. Read More
Do you recall any of the details of why it was so wonderful and what happened to make it memorable for those people?… Read More
(Bill laughing) I’m gonna say, no, I don’t remember that. (Mark laughing) But it would have been, we had a Komodo dragon, and I’m assuming that that’s the animal they’re talking about. We used to feed them rabbits. In fact, it reached a point where we didn’t realize this, but… Read More
Well, I mean, most of the time, we would try to create break any animal that was gonna be moved, whether it was within the zoo or whether it was outside of the zoo. Read More
And crate breaks mean?… Read More
Means you set the crates up, you get the animal used to the crates so that he’s not afraid of it or she’s not afraid of it. So they go, we feed them, they go in every day. Now we close the door on them beforehand. And so they’re in… Read More
Or even if you’ve got to go in, if you want to get them into a squeeze cage, it’s the same thing. You get them programmed to go in there and nothing happens. And they learn, they can go in, they get fed, door’s close, and then when it’s time… Read More
Dart them. And even then we gave them the antagonist, the female went in without any problem, the male wouldn’t, he just stood up and just stood there and we’re pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling, and we finally, finally get him into the crate, drop the door, we… Read More
Are those the kinds of techniques and things that you would impart on keepers for things that you learned?… Read More
Were there things about handling animals that you tried to, techniques or principles that you tried to impart and what are some of those principles?… Read More
But we’d never dropped the doors. Good point to look learn. We’d never drop the doors. So in goes the male, not a problem, and we hadn’t dropped the door on him because he was in, and in goes to the female and the door jams because she evidently twisted… Read More
And I’m looking at this thing and I’m thinking, “This is gonna be disaster. We’ve got this big ceremony to everything coming up and we’ve got these two rhinos that now we got to try to get them in and they wouldn’t go in. So we ended up having to… Read More
By knock them down, you mean?… Read More
Would you say there were different techniques for different types of animals that you learned for grabbing or handling them?… Read More