I still, I guess, my thinking at the time that Frank would’ve gotten the job, ’cause he had oodles more experience than me. But when it came literally overnight, he tells me, Mike you’re the general curator. I mean, and he said that he had concerns about Frank, that his… Read More
I was so lucky to being at the right place at the right time at that point in my career, I applied for neither one, for neither the zoologist job or the general curator’s job. I mean, literally they were handed to me. I mean, I wanna say that John… Read More
There was no evolution that I guess you can call it evolution or enlightening?… Read More
How do you see it?… Read More
We’re gonna talk a little about your evolution to general curator, but how do you see your evolution from the zoologist to general curator?… Read More
How did that kind of evolve?… Read More
But, you know, I mean, I’m sure it’s happened to many zoo people. You just react to a situation hopefully it works out well and there’s no problem. Read More
What did I just do or why did I do that?… Read More
You do something you don’t realize after you’re done. Read More
I figured I gotta go in there and close some doors. And I just went in there screaming, making as much noise as I can. I wanted that bear to know I was coming in there and hopefully that would work to my benefit. And I ran in, the bear… Read More
But it is what it is or was what it was. And the other incident that I remember that I personally dealt with, that we had a polar bear at the exhibit, at the zoo. There were like three cages inside, small cages that would bring him in at night. Read More
And I always think this was my moment of stupidity in terms of what I wound up doing, become running over there, driving up with the golf cart. And I guess we made a call. I don’t remember if we made a call to the police, and to be honest… Read More
How do you deal with it?… Read More
I mean, the branches were breaking the fall. We got, actually I stand corrected, we got one earlier that we were able to get a shot of. The second one was later in the one we were worried about and it came falling through the trees. We were able to… Read More
I mean, excuse me. It even, on the table at the time, though it was in the summer and there was lots of daylight left, we started discussing, if we don’t get these animals by such and such a time, we’re gonna have to put them down because we it’s… Read More
I think of two instances specifically at Mesker while I was there. One was, we had two older chimps, female chimps that were in this old building That was probably 50 years old at the time. And one Saturday morning, I mean, literally it had like a half moon shaped… Read More
I mean, this is something that you should plan for, but then again, there’s almost so much planning you can wind up doing, because the chimps are 60 or 70 feet or 80 feet up a tree, there’s not much you that you could do with the capture equipment that… Read More
And in Mesker Park, when you were there as general curator or zoologist, did you have experience with animals getting out and what was your role and how was it handled?… Read More
And I’m thinking retrospectively, in San Francisco, at times we would have training stuff in terms of how we grabbing animals. I never remember doing that in Evansville. I mean, other than bringing the people with, whether it be curator and keepers, who didn’t have that experience that needed to… Read More
I mean, certainly the first five years I was there. I mean, at some point in time, I mean, I really had to embrace the role because we wound up hiring more staff in the late seventies due to the federal government making funds available. So all of a sudden… Read More