And we had a walkway, a deck above the painted dog exhibit, 14 feet high. And on that exhibit it had slanted graphics so that people wouldn’t put their kids up there, wouldn’t sit their kids up there, because it was slanted backwards so you wouldn’t do that. And it… Read More
We talk about the things you do as a zoo director that you never think you would do. Well, I’ve had the great fortune of talking to the coroner twice about the results of necropsies. And I’ve had the sad job of telling a wife that she needs to go… Read More
Were the lessons learned different from the other incident?… Read More
Or were there different ones?… Read More
Different ones in that case. That was hard, too. So we had a mother who had a two-year-old child who came to our school programs in the morning. They came and attended a school program. I was not there that day, it was a Sunday. But I was home, I… Read More
And then we went through, everybody has an opinion and a thought process, and managing all that, managing the media, managing the PR. I mean, we had media that wanted to show up in droves to the funeral. And I was able to call that off because of the relationships… Read More
Do not do that to the family. I mean, people were camped out. The magnitude of it’s just incredible. People were camped out at the young man’s home, media were camped out there, they were banging on people’s doors, they were banging on the neighbor’s doors next door, they were… Read More
They loved what they were doing. And so they did not sue us. They didn’t actually respond to any of the ambulance chasers that came after them promising them big money if they sued the zoo. They were very understanding that it was just a horrible accident and it was… Read More
You gotta lead. I mean, if you don’t lead any other time, that’s when you gotta lead. And so you have to be able to assure them that everything’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay. This is a horrible accident, it’s a terrible thing, wasn’t our plan, but we’re… Read More
Whether it’s the keeper or whether it was the child, heaven forbid you lose a child, but a child, it’s not your plan. You can do every single thing you can possibly think of to do, but sometimes stuff just happens. Sometimes things bad just happen. And you have to… Read More
And so we were able to, with food, entice the elephants to move away from the keeper. And we began CPR on the keeper then until the ambulance arrived. Then we had the elephants on the grounds. Now we’ve got, literally, it looks like, along the fence line above where… Read More
Now we like to say, and the animal rights groups particularly like to say, that animals have this long memory and will react because of whatever, abuse or whatever. But that’s not what happened here. The animal got frightened, the animal got scared, and unfortunately Mike fell underneath her, and… Read More
And so we were able to lead them all the way back around and into the building, and then continue to care for Mike at that point. So we were able to get the ambulance to Mike. Unfortunately, he passed away. He was not able to be saved due to… Read More
And right there at that point, there was a shiny cart, a plumber’s cart. And the plumber’s cart was parked at an angle into the pathway where they were gonna walk. And the plumber’s cart had on the back of it, it was an open cart with all kind of… Read More
And when it hit that plumber’s cart, now they’re up against a hillside. Plumber’s cart’s parked up against a hillside, there’s a light pole there, there’s the elephant, the elephant spins, and when she spins, not meaning to, but when she spins, the keeper loses his footing, because it’s early… Read More
He tried to get the elephant off of our keeper, but unfortunately it was too late. So now we’ve got an elephant and a baby elephant on the grounds, they’re halfway around the loop. The injured keepers laying there. And we’ve got staff converging on the site, ’cause people have… Read More
It’s interesting because, when you become a zoo director, and you become president and CEO of a zoo, the last thing you think you’re going to deal with is the loss of a human life. That’s really the last thing that you think you’re going to be dealing with. And… Read More
We didn’t just let ’em stand there, fat, and not got the tone and the muscles they needed. We walked ’em around the zoo. And so before the public came on board, we would walk the animals around the zoo. And so we’d walk ’em around the zoo. Our zoo’s… Read More
On this particular day we were walking our curator, and one of our elephant managers, elephant keepers, was walking a female elephant who we’d never had any incident, any problems whatsoever. And matter of fact, she was the animal we used for all of our photo ops, all of our… Read More
So just a fabulous, fabulous zoo without question. Afrikaans in Mexico, another fabulous zoo, new zoo. Very large spaces for the animals, beautiful exhibits. So a wonderful, wonderful facility. Point Defiance Zoo is a gorgeous zoo. The view is incredible, the animal collection is fabulous, but really they’re too numerous,… Read More