Interview 14794 – Caption Index: 149
What did I just do or why did I do that?… Read More
What did I just do or why did I do that?… Read More
You do something you don’t realize after you’re done. Read More
I figured I gotta go in there and close some doors. And I just went in there screaming, making as much noise as I can. I wanted that bear to know I was coming in there and hopefully that would work to my benefit. And I ran in, the bear… Read More
But it is what it is or was what it was. And the other incident that I remember that I personally dealt with, that we had a polar bear at the exhibit, at the zoo. There were like three cages inside, small cages that would bring him in at night. Read More
And I always think this was my moment of stupidity in terms of what I wound up doing, become running over there, driving up with the golf cart. And I guess we made a call. I don’t remember if we made a call to the police, and to be honest… Read More
How do you deal with it?… Read More
I mean, the branches were breaking the fall. We got, actually I stand corrected, we got one earlier that we were able to get a shot of. The second one was later in the one we were worried about and it came falling through the trees. We were able to… Read More
I mean, excuse me. It even, on the table at the time, though it was in the summer and there was lots of daylight left, we started discussing, if we don’t get these animals by such and such a time, we’re gonna have to put them down because we it’s… Read More
I think of two instances specifically at Mesker while I was there. One was, we had two older chimps, female chimps that were in this old building That was probably 50 years old at the time. And one Saturday morning, I mean, literally it had like a half moon shaped… Read More
I mean, this is something that you should plan for, but then again, there’s almost so much planning you can wind up doing, because the chimps are 60 or 70 feet or 80 feet up a tree, there’s not much you that you could do with the capture equipment that… Read More
And in Mesker Park, when you were there as general curator or zoologist, did you have experience with animals getting out and what was your role and how was it handled?… Read More
And I’m thinking retrospectively, in San Francisco, at times we would have training stuff in terms of how we grabbing animals. I never remember doing that in Evansville. I mean, other than bringing the people with, whether it be curator and keepers, who didn’t have that experience that needed to… Read More
I mean, certainly the first five years I was there. I mean, at some point in time, I mean, I really had to embrace the role because we wound up hiring more staff in the late seventies due to the federal government making funds available. So all of a sudden… Read More
What is your feelings about the handling?… Read More
Well, once again, the business has evolved over thousands of years. But in my tenure it certainly has evolved, the things that were available or known in the seventies to me were still many of the old school ways. I mean, we didn’t have the darts that are available today. Read More
You talked about your relationship with the elephant and handling the elephant. You talked about netting, some of the skills like netting skills, some people would say are eroding because fewer animals have to be handled in that way. And there’s more training techniques and so forth, positive, negative. Read More
Probably about it’s eight inch tusks. And when she got the electric shock, she backed off and she broke off part one tusk. it was just split. And we knew we had to do something about it and we didn’t know how well she would do it. But once again,… Read More
And so we had enough sense on, okay, we’ll put a plate over this light switch and not use this. But we used to call bunny the educated elephant, this door, she would open this keep door, which wasn’t locked with her trunk. And there was another light switch and… Read More
That was a routine, which was common in zoos at the time. And we also, she was scared of thunder. And when there was a thunderstorm, which was pretty regular in event, we would chain her up. The chains, I mean, we used to say was a security product. I… Read More
There was a light, there was a door in front of the exhibit and this was the keeper area. It was about eight foot. And then about six foot wide. And then there’s little safety barrier to keep the public out. Or it was just open space. And there was… Read More