Well, I had dealt with it a little bit at the National Zoo. I mean, I knew Sue at PETA before she retired and Jeanie after she took over her job. So PETA never got involved in the elephant controversy in Milwaukee. I mean, they called and I explained what… Read More
I think the controversy was just this one woman who never let it go. She spent two and a half years getting the elephants out of Milwaukee, and that’s all she did. And, you know, when you’ve got a job and someone is spending two and a half years working… Read More
Well, I was involved in, yes, you know, I had to be on Milwaukee Television with Chuck and I had to be there with Kevin Nealon and Bob Barker. Luckily Bob Barker would never come into the zoo, but they were, Bob Barker was in town and Alec Baldwin was… Read More
Or how did that work and what were your feelings?… Read More
Did you feel that the type of training you received for dealing with and understanding and having some relationship with animal rights people was the kind of training that you might then give to other people or, I mean, did you learn lessons from that, in those type of interactions?… Read More
We still have African elephants. They got rid of the elephant rides. And finally I told Bruce that I could manage the other animals and he took over managing the elephant keepers and the elephant program. This is when the whole protected contact or voluntary contact was in place or… Read More
I mean, we had, Bob Barker came, Kevin Nealon came, we had protests outside the zoo and just trying to get elephants out of the zoo. Well, the keepers were accused of, brought up on animal cruelty charges, using some of the tapes that Don had done for training purposes. Read More
They were loading her up and she, they finally got her loaded, but it was difficult. And Don did the, Don and his, did the transport. And she urinated and, you know, it came out red, so this woman was there and it was, oh, she’s bleeding it, this is… Read More
And were you assigned the job then to deal with this controversy or to be the representative?… Read More
Oh, yeah, I mean, not necessarily with the keepers. I mean, with elephants. The elephants at Milwaukee became very controversial. We had, this was just after Chuck started in 1990, 1991. I had three Asian elephants and one Asian elephant was getting increasingly aggressive at another Asian elephant and at… Read More
Now after you took over the title of curator of large mammals, did you have management issues that you had to deal with that you recollect were major deals?… Read More
And so we ended up sending her to Hawthorn-Mellody Farms, which created just a big fear. We had an animal rights activist who played French horn for the Milwaukee Symphony, took a leave of absence to work on this to save Lota. And, I mean, I could see her just… Read More
So you had to deal with union issues?… Read More
Oh yeah. Regarding- Whatever. of the collection. Well, with management issues, whether it, you know, on whatever grievance was at at the time, it usually wasn’t managing the collection. It was always scheduling, you know, or not getting what they wanted, or whatever. You just have to explain this is… Read More
You know, it’s all about this, this is a problem we’re having. It was never anything that I worried about, so. Read More
What would your staff say about your management style?… Read More
I don’t know. I did have the union steward, after he retired, came back once and apologized to me for being so hard on me, ’cause he thought that I was pretty good after all at what I did. So that probably was the best, ’cause, yeah, Germany and I… Read More
Any tricks of the trade for managing people that you developed?… Read More
Like, oh my God, what did I do?… Read More
When someone wants to talk to you, never guess what they wanna talk to you about, ’cause you’re always wrong. Just wait until they talk to you (chuckles) ’cause you get worried. Read More