I wasn’t gonna say anything on the air, you know, who he was. And I’d say, “Well, he’s been an engineer for quite some time here, he’s,” you know, and kept avoiding their questions. But it was yeah, a couple of things that you have to deal with that you… Read More
But early on in my career, we dealt with a lot of animal dealers, that’s the way it was done. You sold and traded animals individually with the other zoos also, but a lot of times animal dealers were involved. And we had a Malayan tapir that we had on… Read More
And sometimes, you know the press can be kinda tough to deal with. Read More
Especially for instance, in the case of the engineer that passed away, they wanted to know who he was, what was his name, you know?… Read More
Well I knew his name, but I knew that they were still trying to reach his next of kin, you know?… Read More
In the history of the zoo, has that been the only death that has occurred at St. Louis that you’re aware of?… Read More
(coughing) Excuse me. There was another death some years later, actually right outside the zoo, which was pretty traumatic. It was a summer afternoon, there was a number of visitors standing outside waiting either to go to their vehicles or to be picked up or whatever. And on the street… Read More
And so I had to deal with the press, and how do you deal with that?… Read More
Certainly for an animal escape, an animal injury, whether it’s a personnel injury or whether it’s two animals, you know, fighting themselves and and injuring each other, or what can you do to improve it?… Read More
We always would try to discuss that. And you mentioned, you know, injuries. Probably one of the more, well certainly the most serious injury that I dealt with was not caused by animals and it was not a keeper. But we have a train that rides around the zoo, and… Read More
Normally there could be as many as 100 people on there, ’cause there’s a lot of cars. It came down and instead of, normally, that’s the only hill going downhill, and normally they’re braking down there, braking on it on the way down, and then stop at the station there. Read More
Well, you know the management was, I think over the years as we would see things, you change it right away, when you have something that you can do something differently. I mean, I mentioned the bear thing. Read More
“Well, why can’t we add more lights here, you know?… Read More
Will that prevent something from happening again?” Every time there’s an incident you go over it, and try to figure out what would be better. Read More
Now, were there significant changes that you made in the day-to-day care of the animals?… Read More
When you were you were able to implement things, did you see things that you needed to kind of change on animal management in any area that you observed, and now you had the power to change or to direct?… Read More
And the security guard, our security guards carry guns, .38s, and you know he wanted to shoot, but you know, he didn’t wanna hit Bruce. And so he shot the zebra in the abdomen, which didn’t do anything, you know, to stop the zebra. And the other keeper who was… Read More
What lessons were learned from that?… Read More
Well, yeah he should not have been in the yard there. Interestingly, the zebra got up afterwards and we immobilized it. We got radiographs with the slugs in the skull, but the zebra survived. The zebra was okay the next day. And the zebra lived for about six months after… Read More
And that bullet that went through into the abdomen that they had shot, actually didn’t penetrate the digestive tract, but grazed it enough that there was a huge amount of scar tissue around it, and it constricted the digestive tract, and that zebra died from the impaction six months later. Read More