So I stopped one of them. I said, “You know, I’m from Galveston and I’m interested in herpetology.” “Oh, well you need to talk to so-and-so, Bill Millstadt, he’s our curator, junior curator of herpetology.” So they took me to Bill Millstadt, who’s became quite an active herpetologist in his… Read More
And then I would, I was told, “Well now, up at about five or 10%,” “Why?” “Well, we get our budgets based on this sort of thing, show that people are using the zoo.” I never did that because I really wanted to know how many people were coming into… Read More
Well, I mean, I don’t want to answer it with a simpleton, a simplistic thing. But the purpose of zoos is to be visited, to be educated there. You have to use the zoo, usage is the big thing. Attendance figures may be part of the, well when I worked… Read More
And I think zoos need to be very sensitive and do whatever they can within discreetness, within the realm of, that we’ve all pretty well agreed on of what a zoo should do and what it should be. They need to work on that, and make sure it gets across… Read More
And they never would vote against the zoo after that. Some of them, you know, you can’t crack all the nuts. I shouldn’t have said that. Some people you cannot educate, but you need to make that effort. And if it doesn’t work from you, those people are usually sensitive… Read More
Any advice- Yep, any advice for the neophyte zoo director about the importance of marketing zoos?… Read More
What are the most important aspects of marketing?… Read More
Now, they’re brought about by lobbying agencies, and all that, but we can lobby. And we need to lobby for better protection, for fewer problems in the environment. And I think that’s paramount for the zoos to do, because they get the bulk of the people coming through them more… Read More
Well, I think number one, you, of course, you educate them. How do you educate them? I believe you get them to the zoo. Everybody likes some special treatment. I think I already told you on Friday, we did a zoo walk. And I would suggest anytime we had a… Read More
What’s the most efficient way to deal with elected officials and municipal bureaucrats in order to develop and manage a zoo today?… Read More
And I’d like, I’m gonna see that some other zoos get to look at it.” “Sure, I’ll get it in the mail to you.” Well, okay, I dug a pit and now I’m trapped in it. I got my friend in the physics department at TCU to give me a… Read More
I think number one, he has to have empathy for life, for live animals. He has to be sensitive, by that I mean he needs to be sensitive to what their needs are. He needs to know about those needs, and he needs to respond to those needs in a… Read More
What would be the top, the three top qualities you think a curator should have today?… Read More
You know, that’s what they use in the prisons to do away with fellow human beings and it works fine.” He said, “That’s fascinating. Read More
Does the Denver Zoo know about that?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Can you send me the schematics of that device?… Read More
If you feed them dead, how do you kill them?… Read More
I hate to tell you this, and I hope you don’t pass this on. But I think I told you we had a meeting, national meeting, of the Humane Society at our herpetarium, when they met in Fort Worth. And the head of one of the societies asked me that… Read More
So I won’t have to go into it here. But it’s, I think it’s humane, and it’s effective and it’s quick. (snaps fingers) And if you’re gonna kill it, it’s probably quicker than what the steaks you had for dinner took for that cow to be killed anyway. And that… Read More
‘Cause if you do it in Fort Worth, they’ll want me to do that in Dallas.” You know, he later took on the Dallas Zoo. So he’s been in the business. He was in the business a long time. We did it. We did it. We kept those feeding things… Read More
Excellent question. Well, first I think they do need to clean up anything that borders on inhumaneness, on an animal that is not behaving normally, and living in normal, reasonably natural, I’ll use, the natural life. And if they’re, they can’t do that, then we either need to change the… Read More