Well, it’s fun. Charlie was a great guy to work for. He was a taskmaster, you better do what he asked. But he really was, really great. Now, I remember one incidence where we were going to do something, we were gonna add to the zoo. Now the zoo is… Read More
But there was this other area that wasn’t being utilized. And our our chairman of the board, very powerful individual in St. Louis, Bob Hyland, he ran the city in a way, because he ran KMOX, powerful radio station. Everybody that advertised anything happened through him, and he was the… Read More
Is he losing weight, is he getting,” you know?… Read More
And so everybody is finally, it’s coming to everybody’s sight, “Well, we all have an input in this. There’s all, everybody has something to add to it, and you know, and we can come up with something.” And so the consultants group was a really neat group of people that,… Read More
Now did you feel then that as the assistant director, you were having a major input in starting to shape the direction of the zoo?… Read More
What kind of diet should we have for a pangolin?” And I chose a species that nobody would be familiar with, you know?… Read More
“Oh it’s easy, you know?” The dentist said, “You know, well let’s look at his teeth and see what kind of teeth he has, and we’ll be able to figure it out,” you know?… Read More
And you know, the nutritionist, “Well, it has to be so much balance between proteins and fats and you know, what mineral content and so on.” And the behaviorist said, “Well, you go to the wild and you collect the feces from them, and you know, you sacrifice a few… Read More
And so we had this consultant group that was very helpful to us. And we, like I said, we had regular meetings. I know we had one, it was primarily on nutrition, and I would lead part of it too. And we had Mark Morris there, who’s developed all kinds… Read More
We had you know, and I says, “Okay, how should we put a diet together?… Read More
I mean, what should we do?… Read More
You know, two human ophthalmologists and one veterinary ophthalmologist, and all wanted to work on the cheetah, and so they were happy to donate their time. Read More
And I had one intern as to, “You know Bill, are you guys upset with me?… Read More
You haven’t called me for over a year to come and treat any of the animals,” you know?… Read More
As a quick aside, when you were veterinarian, did you ever work or have a regular physician’s group that came and helped you with unusual or new things?… Read More
And if you did, did you develop it, it was already there, or?… Read More
I developed it. I called it our consultants group, and I used it as part of our residency program because, we probably had 40 to 50 consultants in that group. And one of the things that I required the residents to do was to make regular presentations to this group. Read More
We don’t want you to be in the construction phases and now change this, because it’s too expensive to change then. It’s a lot easier with an eraser and pen to change those things than once it’s constructed, and let’s make sure it’s gonna be built what you need.” And… Read More
Did you have to leave, or continue to leave the zoo medicine behind or not?… Read More
(sighing) I guess I did leave a lot of it behind. I had some good people there. Eric Miller was still there, stayed the rest of his career, and we had another full-time veterinarian, Randy Yungy, who was there at the time. And so we had some good other clinical… Read More