But we have a lot of volunteers who are in front of the enclosures and talking about the animals. One of the things, I remember one time going to a zoo, it might have even been Disney, and it was a huge flight cage. And I was going through, was… Read More
So one of the things that, I guess I did implement that. You know, but our education department was happy to do it too was, we have a whole cadre of volunteers. And not only volunteers, some of them are paid, who just do that. They’re there to engage the… Read More
A couple of questions about zoo medicine that you were involved with, possibly as director or when you were veterinarian, hoisting elephants?… Read More
You know, you can only sign the health certificate.” And I said, “Well okay, but all of its animal records is gonna go on that health certificate, I can tell you that,” you know, ’cause there’s spot to put it all in there. And the end of the story was,… Read More
Do you have any secret about getting people to read educational messages in the zoo?… Read More
I don’t know that I have any answers to what’s the best thing. You know, there’s some people that go and read everything, and there’s others who don’t read anything. I do think that, you know, you wanna have interesting information on there. A lot of times all you have… Read More
And one of the things, when an animal goes out, it has to have a health certificate signed by the veterinarian, that you looked at it and checked it out, and I had, and it was in good shape. We had it in a crate. I signed the health certificate,… Read More
And they looked through all the animal records and they said, “Oh my gosh, it’s had this in the past. It’s had you know, nasal discharge, you know, several times,” and what I had treated it with, and so on. Well they saw that and they said, “Oh, this is… Read More
And his wife, you know?… Read More
I wasn’t gonna say anything on the air, you know, who he was. And I’d say, “Well, he’s been an engineer for quite some time here, he’s,” you know, and kept avoiding their questions. But it was yeah, a couple of things that you have to deal with that you… Read More
But early on in my career, we dealt with a lot of animal dealers, that’s the way it was done. You sold and traded animals individually with the other zoos also, but a lot of times animal dealers were involved. And we had a Malayan tapir that we had on… Read More
And sometimes, you know the press can be kinda tough to deal with. Read More
Especially for instance, in the case of the engineer that passed away, they wanted to know who he was, what was his name, you know?… Read More
Well I knew his name, but I knew that they were still trying to reach his next of kin, you know?… Read More
In the history of the zoo, has that been the only death that has occurred at St. Louis that you’re aware of?… Read More
(coughing) Excuse me. There was another death some years later, actually right outside the zoo, which was pretty traumatic. It was a summer afternoon, there was a number of visitors standing outside waiting either to go to their vehicles or to be picked up or whatever. And on the street… Read More
And so I had to deal with the press, and how do you deal with that?… Read More
Certainly for an animal escape, an animal injury, whether it’s a personnel injury or whether it’s two animals, you know, fighting themselves and and injuring each other, or what can you do to improve it?… Read More
We always would try to discuss that. And you mentioned, you know, injuries. Probably one of the more, well certainly the most serious injury that I dealt with was not caused by animals and it was not a keeper. But we have a train that rides around the zoo, and… Read More
Normally there could be as many as 100 people on there, ’cause there’s a lot of cars. It came down and instead of, normally, that’s the only hill going downhill, and normally they’re braking down there, braking on it on the way down, and then stop at the station there. Read More