Interview 33485 – Caption Index: 45
I said, I said, where’s the underwear?… Read More
I said, I said, where’s the underwear?… Read More
He said, that might come next year. So it was, it was a, I thought at that point that’s in my zoo career. I thought that I’d, I made it, this, this was, you know, no one had done this before and, and you’re at London’s, the Zoological Society of… Read More
London was Unionized Zoo. And you know, here’s me taking one of the few options for promotion and some outsider, some young outsider, I mean, I was 29 at the time, and most head keepers when they finally, you know, walked into the dead men’s shoes, that was their, their… Read More
And for, if we added all the uniform I’d ever received from every zoo I’d ever worked at, it wouldn’t have amounted to the double arm full of stuff that I was barely able to see over the top of being Charlie Kitchen side, a former o overseer taking me… Read More
And anyway, couple weeks I’d gone on holiday, I’d come back and the chap who’s just recently retired as director, him and I were sharing a flat and Dudley and, and Derek said, oh, Brian Bertram, who was curator of mammals at London at the time, said, he’s Doug, Brian… Read More
What kind of zoo did you find and how do you get this job?… Read More
My opinion of London Zoo had changed. We’d always kind of, in the Scottish contingent, we’d always seen it. No, we had good friends down here. We’d always seen it as a wee bit too regimented. But Dudley Zoo was not, was, was not well funded. The senior management team,… Read More
I’ve, I’ve, I’ve seen enough friends getting killed or, you know, been in the proximity when they have been. It was like, okay, right, I need to find another job. And that was the first sort of head of carnivores position, if you like, that had come up. And so… Read More
And for me that was, it was okay, right?… Read More
And basically I went in to chase the cat off to get him out. So there were a handful of occasions where I did go in with the tigers, but it was always to basically save his life. In 1984 and 1986, you’re now overseer of carnivores at Dudley Zoo. Read More
A guy I used to work with at the Bronx, Jim Cronin, he was working at Howlet managing the small primate section as a, and the, there was a vacancy for the head of the carnivore section ’cause the head keeper had been killed by Tiger. And so Jim had… Read More
How can we turn this into a profession, which it wasn’t From 19 80, 19 84, you’re the head charter war keeper, how Howlet Zoo Park, how do you get to Howlet Zoo Park?… Read More
But yeah, it was how, it was a philosophy of, okay, right, how can, how can we improve this?… Read More
So I suppose a lot of the things that the zookeepers of today would rather take for granted didn’t exist or, or were, were in a, they existed, but maybe in isolation. London Zoo had a keeper training course, but it was only for London and Waid staff. And it… Read More
How do we, how do we educate keepers?… Read More
How should we be keeping our animals?… Read More
How, how, how do we raise the game, I think was what I was, was my philosophy. Read More
How, how do we make it better?… Read More
The director had made promises that he couldn’t keep. And so I was like, I was at a loose end that they were looking for a, a manager for the non drive-through area at the Bear Park or Cameron Wildlife Park. And, and so I opted for that for a… Read More
La Loman Wildlife Park no longer exists. It was originally called Cameron Bear Park. It was the Chipperfield organization who started all the safari parks. They looked at a different model. So instead of Africa, they’d do a bear park. They actually had a drive through polar bear enclosure, which… Read More