You know, if you, you know, you’ve gotta keep one outside. You gotta keep one inside. I mean, we had, one of my jobs as a keeper, when I discovered I really couldn’t work nights was, I spent four months watching the Indian rhinos they were trying to breed, Falkner,… Read More
In 1992 in a zoo magazine, you said, “It feels good to be connected to an international community of captive and wild animal population managers.” Remember saying that?… Read More
Were you thinking, when you were involved in that, were you thinking about zoo exhibit design philosophy?… Read More
Oh, I was just thinking practicality. Read More
She had been down at the, she’d been down to the White House all dressed up in her finery with Jim Jones, our primary elephant keeper, to meet President Reagan and was in Time Magazine, and all the rest. So it was, I got to go to my first and… Read More
Is it true that the National Zoo cannot reject a diplomatic gift?… Read More
I mean, you took all of these diplomat, the zoo took all of these animals. I don’t ever remember them rejecting a diplomatic gift. But it’s not done now. You know, I think, I can’t remember one after Ling and, well, no, Reagan, that was the last one. So that… Read More
(Elizabeth sighs) Well, I mean, the other big thing when I was at the National Zoo was we, during the Reagan, when Reagan was up for reelection, he got a gift from the president of Sri Lanka who was running for reelection and elephants were their symbol too. Read More
So we got a baby elephant from, now was it Sri Lanka?… Read More
I think it was Sri Lanka. And that was really difficult because the baby, she didn’t survive. She had some sort of parasite. And, I mean, it caused an international incident, I mean, Richard Montali was the pathologist at the zoo at the time. And, you know, he did the… Read More
Did this responsibility weigh heavy on you or just part of your job?… Read More
It was part of my job. I mean, you can only do what you can do. So, you know, I didn’t. Read More
Did this experience or maybe any others that, when you were at the National Zoo, change your notion about what a zoo should be like or how things might start to be changed or things that now you’re thinking of, ’cause you’re gaining a lot of experience?… Read More
Oh, no, we were, oh no, when they thought Ling was pregnant, we had a panda watch, it was, we had volunteers who, you know, there were cameras set up, keepers. So we had 24-hour watch. And when the first baby panda was born, I don’t remember whether they did… Read More
And then the baby didn’t live. I mean, none of Ling’s babies lived. Turned out that she had, I think Mitch decided that she had some sort of infection, vaginal infection. And so the babies died soon after birth because of the infection. She was a great mother holding the… Read More
I’d forgotten that. Yeah, Ted must’ve retired. And so I, and I slept through the whole thing and then they said, “Well, you know, you were on the Nightly News last night.” (chuckles) I didn’t. Read More
Well, I’m trying to, I remember when the first baby panda was born and died. Maybe the sec, I don’t remember the second. I mean, I could’ve been. Read More
So you saw the first panda baby born or you heard it or?… Read More
Oh, everybody was there. You know, if you were gonna be putting the pandas together, all the researchers were there. The general curator was there. I don’t think Dr. Reed came down, you know, at that time. But, yeah, no, it was a production. And lots of meetings. Lots of… Read More
There was a lot of controversy with the pandas and reproduction. Read More