We were the only kids in our school that were happy when we went back to school. All the rest of the kids were like, “Oh God, we gotta go back to school.” And we were sitting there going, “Hallelujah, I don’t have to get up at 5:30.” (Barbara laughs)… Read More
Not a zoo veterinarian, ’cause I didn’t know anything about zoos, North Carolina didn’t even have a zoo at that time. But I knew I wanted to be a veterinarian. Read More
Well what was your first, what zoo was the very first zoo that you remember you actually saw?… Read More
What kind of animals were you dealing with?… Read More
Just all farm animals, horses?… Read More
Yeah, farm animals. We had farm animals. We had cows, and horses, and pigs, and chickens, and all that kind of thing. So we basically had the farm animal setting, the old farm buildings, and everything you could think of from a farm standpoint. I was involved in 4H, showed… Read More
Very much so. We grew up on a farm, and so I had three brothers and myself, and I credit my parents with a lot of the gusto I have, for lack of a better word to put it, because they treated me just like the boys. I was no… Read More
So on the farm, were you, did you go to the city?… Read More
Piano, piano. Piano and organ. Tell us a little about your childhood, growing up. Read More
Were animals part of your life?… Read More
And who were your parents?… Read More
What’d they do?… Read More
My parents are Joe and Peggy Thomas, and my dad was a school teacher and also has a farm with tobacco, and soybeans, and corn. And my mom was a music teacher, actually. So she taught music and raised four kids. Read More
Piano, violin?… Read More
Okay, I’m Dr. Barbara Baker. I was born in Sanford, North Carolina in 1956. Read More
I think quite honestly, I would think the toilets. I think that the toilets are something brilliant, which nobody really has picked up on. Like the Night Safari, nobody’s really picked up on the Night Safari. I don’t think they even get it, half the people who talk about Night… Read More
I don’t know. The only other Night Safari that was ever built, we designed in Chiang Mai, which is Thailand, which is still operating. And we built one when I was still at Singapore in China in Guangzhou. And they closed it down, not because it was doing badly, because… Read More
Balodies toilets, sir. Well, thank you, Bernard Harrison. I appreciate you sitting down with us- My pleasure. Talking about your life and legacy. Yeah, good. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Read More
Anyway, I can’t remember his name, but he was a curator of mammals at Leipzig. And he said, “Look, we’re on this boat, it’s gone to the Antarctic. It’s a East German or it’s a Russian vessel and we’ve stopped into Singapore and I have all these East German marks,… Read More
And years later, I find that Jörg is now the director of the Munster Zoo. And Adler, Jörg Adler, that’s the director of Munster Zoo. And I meet up with him. I said, “My God, you are the guy who came to see me.” And he said, “You’re the guy… Read More