It was a cleaning nightmare because you had all these eye beams that were going up 56 feet high. You couldn’t clean it. So then USDA inspections would start getting on. And then we wound up designing, putting in these fittings in place that were at a 45 degree angle… Read More
And they’re worried about a catwalk, I thought. But bottom line is, it was decided that since the society was paying for it, they were the owners of the exhibit because the city didn’t become owner until it was built and given a gift in place. So the society didn’t… Read More
So we wanted a cat walk on top. So we’re on top of the animals. It gives us, you know, a little more animal, so to speak where we can work with the animals a little better. While they’re wound up being this gigantic fight with the designers. And and… Read More
Why we saying, well, if we have a Colobus that’s 56 feet high and we’re 56 feet low and we gotta do something. How are we going to do it?… Read More
We wanted them to put a catwalk on the top of the exhibit, 56 feet high, right. In the length of the exhibit. Read More
It’s only this deep, oh yeah. That’s 24 feet, you approved it. Oh, you know, so, I mean, there was disappointment in that. The Colobus, we built this gigantic Colobus structure. I mean, it was 56 feet tall at the highest point of it. And it was scale up down… Read More
I can’t say I remember how many ideas that we came up with, but they had all kinds of consultants and designers to design that aspect. And there’d be references from the exhibit, saying, go to computer J in the education component and you’ll learn more about the Celebes ape… Read More
That was a huge problem with San Francisco in terms of, an exhibit would be built. And then you walk away thinking it’s gonna take care of itself and maintained, I mean, deferred maintenance, which is a common problem unfortunately, throughout many institutions, it was a huge problem in San… Read More
So, from concept and Saul was a primate guy. I don’t care what kind of primate. He knew it, he liked it. You know, he was the man. So it was then decided to do the primate exhibit and try to show what a primate was, through its diversity. They… Read More
Well, okay. Well the Gorilla World was first and when I started, I came there in December just to visit Saul was the first time. And I started in March, when I came there in December, I was there for the groundbreaking for Gorilla World. And then when I started… Read More
It was anything. Rhinos, were an exhibit. You said you were involved in exhibit planning. Read More
What exhibits did you kind of move along the way with you as a main person, Primate World, Gorillas, were you involved in the putting these together?… Read More
And we’re going, we don’t want this rhino. We can’t take this rhino. And there’s all kinds of dialogue. I mean, bottom line, what happened, I mean, it changed a lot of things at the zoo, bottom line, we had to send The Wilds $10,000 so they could build a… Read More
You know what airline should we put it on?… Read More
We gotta send you your rhino. When do you want, Lincoln Park told us you own this rhino. Read More
What we sent an animal to the Lincoln Park Zoo on loan, and then Lincoln Park was redoing their large mammal house, building a whole new super facility and they had to move the animals out and they sent it to Ohio. And I can’t think of the name of… Read More
If there’s no change of ownership, even though it’s crossing state lines, you don’t need that permit. ‘Cause I legally that animal, but zoos, there’s still, you wanted to move, you didn’t want to have a animal forever. I could tell you an example, one of the few times that… Read More
‘Cause it almost always comes down to a black and white issue. This is the way, you know, it’s gotta be done if you want to get past the management authority because you know, there were multiple authorities that would go off on a permit and things changed too. I… Read More
And I presume that you knew colleagues within the profession who also did it, was this the norm for curators to be able to do this kind of job?… Read More
Once again, every institution is unique, back in the early eighties, I won’t say there were that many, zoos may not have had the luxury of having full-time registrars, or just how they chose or how the staff managed. Some zoos were, I mean smaller, the curators had to write… Read More