And you’d see some good exhibits at different places, and you know think, “Well, yeah, we could incorporate some of that.” When you were, did any of them jump out at you like, “Wow, I was at the same,” oh, did you go always when, even where you were director,… Read More
I continued to go to the Veterinary Association while I was assistant director, but once I became director, I went more towards the AZA than Zoo Veterinarians. Read More
Or was it, “What we’re doing, we’re doing.” I guess I relied more on the people involved in that as to how that went, rather than dictating which way they should go. I know again, we went into the areas of their interest more so than anything else. Read More
And as you were director, were you able to travel, I assume, to other zoos, and were you able to see things at other zoos that maybe you wanted to apply at St. Louis?… Read More
You know from the beginning, way before I was even director, I always took the opportunity to, you know, the zoo from the beginning always sent me to usually two conferences a year. One of them being the Zoo Veterinary Conference, the other being one of AZA’s, the Zoo and… Read More
Other diversity I think in, you know, we used to have a lot of people that kinda grew up on a farm and maybe knew more animal management, but very few of those anymore. I think we have a fairly good representative of what the metropolitan area is in St. Read More
What input did you as director have in directing the type of international conservation that the zoo would be doing?… Read More
How diverse was your workforce?… Read More
Well one of the things, most when I first started, it was almost all men, with only a few women. We had a fairly, a good representation of minorities, in St. Louis, African Americans. I always figure if you can kinda mimic what the general population is, and we had… Read More
Women certainly much more represented today. It’s gotta be, maybe more than 50% now of women keepers in the zoo. And it’s just times have changed. In terms of veterinary medicine, when I was in veterinary school, we had 60 students, three women, 57 men. Today, 80% of veterinary students… Read More
You mentioned really early on there were women keepers, but that was in the children’s zoo. Read More
Were there women, when did women keepers start to come, or African American keepers?… Read More
It’s 40 degrees in there, and so the visitor comes in, they’re immediately impressed by how cold it is, you know?… Read More
In the employees that were taking care of the animals, how diverse were your employees?… Read More
And it’s open. You know unfortunately, we’ve had to have somebody monitoring the area all the time, because people were putting their hands in with, you know, they could grab a penguin if they wanted to. And so it makes for a much more intimate experience, I think, for the… Read More
And, “Oh my gosh,” the architect, “we didn’t even think about that. Read More
We just built it where it fit,” you know?… Read More
And, but we looked at all kinds of things as far as that was concerned, for the hippos. But the Penguin Puffin, we had an old penguin facility that was behind glass, and it just doesn’t, our new Penguin Puffin, you know, it’s open. Read More
Where’s the sun gonna come?… Read More
Where are you gonna get this reflection off?… Read More