And delightful guy, he had talked, he loved zoos. And he’d gone to the Bronx Zoo, and apparently Bill Conway took him to lunch, took him to dinner, or vice versa. Anyway, they had a very good relationship. And he said, “You know, you,” oh and Mason. What Mason wanted… Read More
A Mexican moccasin. I caught one of those in there. That scared the shit out of me, because they’re very deadly. Neurotoxic, they’re very neurotoxic. Then, but we had… I finally began to come around. And there was a medical doctor, excuse me, a professor. He was a biochemist at… Read More
I mean, he kept moving up. Finally, he was our public services manager, and did a good job. And we made a lot, he made us a lot of money. Ernest went to, was at Fort Worth. When I left there, he… I went to Chámeza as part of a…… Read More
The first consult with State Department was an amateur. And he went up there and dredged, discovered it, so to speak. So they pumped the thing, it went down about 10 feet, it was about 40 feet in deep. And then next day they kept pumping, and it went down… Read More
It’s a sacred, it’s part of the Mayan group there. He wanted me to go down there. And he knew, I mean, I needed, I was in deep depression. So Ernest and I went down there. We caught iguanas, we caught some snakes, and we helped with the… First, they… Read More
How did that happen?… Read More
They were either winos, or… Cooks are very, very undependable in certain respects. And so I ran this ad and Ernest applied. He was about 18, I think. He said, “Well, what do you want to know?” And I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what, I want a hamburger. Now… Read More
Well, I was in deep depression for about, after leaving Fort Worth Zoo. And in fact, what’s his… Ernest Hagler, I had hired him as a hamburger cook. He’s told this story many times, but I ran the ad on it, we were gonna take over the public services in… Read More
Now, you went from there to the Portland Zoo?… Read More
Yes. Read More
When you left Fort Worth, how old were you?… Read More
So that was a, Mertens was a problem. But he did excellent work. I learned a lot from the man. But I’d never hire him again. He came to Oklahoma City and wanted a job. No, no. Read More
I left in ’87. So I was, 47 years old. Read More
Then he went to a new zoo, was it in Charleston, South Carolina?… Read More
Is that where?… Read More
North Carolina. North Carolina? That’s where he went. Well, he built a new zoo there. And then he had some kind of a problem there, and he got fired. And then he became an animal dealer. He worked for Bill Chase. And Bill Chase even said, you know, “You gotta… Read More
I’ve forgotten the name of it. I’ll remember it in a minute. But he went down there as director. And then he went to a zoo, but he had a problem there. He didn’t last there long. Read More
He gave me ideas and all that. But everybody who he had worked for just was so, “You don’t want to hire that guy.” And finally, it was a double-edged sword, I think. Mertens was very good with reptiles. He really was excellent. And he was good with people, to… Read More
Then little things would start happening. You know about palace revolutions. John wanted to, he wanted to move up. He wanted his own zoo. He and Charles Campbell sort of got together, and that wasn’t good for me. There wasn’t anything that was any big deal. That was a role… Read More
No, Mertens was the curator of reptiles at the Columbus Zoo, as I recall. And they stole him away from Columbus, to the Cleveland Zoo, so he was in two zoos. Actually, they didn’t steal him. He was fired in Columbus. And then he was fired at Cleveland. And he… Read More