(laughing) People always ask that question. That’s kinda tough because I like them all. I will have to say that I lean more towards, not a favorite animal, but certainly mammals more so than birds or reptiles. And that’s probably ’cause of a veterinary issue. Mammals, everything we learn in… Read More
Reptiles were a little slower, and so you could do a lot of stuff with reptiles, but mammals were probably my favorite. And you know yeah, there’s some favorite animals that, you know, that you dealt with. I mean, gosh darn, gorillas are impressive animals. Read More
You know and again, trying to get the visitor and the animal as close as possible, they could do some of those things in Europe that we couldn’t do, because of the litigious society that we live in. The zoo ultimately revolves around animals. Read More
Let’s talk about, do you have a favorite animal?… Read More
And, so were there things with the exhibits that you saw at other zoos that you said, “Gee, I gotta bring this back,” Any that jumped to your mind that exhibitry, you said, “I think we could do that better,” or, “Boy, that’s a good idea we haven’t done here”?… Read More
You know, there are some exhibits in more, in California or Florida where the climate is quite a bit different than St. Louis. And I wish we could do those in St. Louis, but realize that we have to have enclosures or buildings that they didn’t even need buildings anymore,… Read More
Well we can’t do that, you know?… Read More
And I wanted to know the operations of how, what was good about it, you know?… Read More
And you’d see some good exhibits at different places, and you know think, “Well, yeah, we could incorporate some of that.” When you were, did any of them jump out at you like, “Wow, I was at the same,” oh, did you go always when, even where you were director,… Read More
I continued to go to the Veterinary Association while I was assistant director, but once I became director, I went more towards the AZA than Zoo Veterinarians. Read More
Or was it, “What we’re doing, we’re doing.” I guess I relied more on the people involved in that as to how that went, rather than dictating which way they should go. I know again, we went into the areas of their interest more so than anything else. Read More
And as you were director, were you able to travel, I assume, to other zoos, and were you able to see things at other zoos that maybe you wanted to apply at St. Louis?… Read More
You know from the beginning, way before I was even director, I always took the opportunity to, you know, the zoo from the beginning always sent me to usually two conferences a year. One of them being the Zoo Veterinary Conference, the other being one of AZA’s, the Zoo and… Read More
Other diversity I think in, you know, we used to have a lot of people that kinda grew up on a farm and maybe knew more animal management, but very few of those anymore. I think we have a fairly good representative of what the metropolitan area is in St. Read More
What input did you as director have in directing the type of international conservation that the zoo would be doing?… Read More
How diverse was your workforce?… Read More
Well one of the things, most when I first started, it was almost all men, with only a few women. We had a fairly, a good representation of minorities, in St. Louis, African Americans. I always figure if you can kinda mimic what the general population is, and we had… Read More
Women certainly much more represented today. It’s gotta be, maybe more than 50% now of women keepers in the zoo. And it’s just times have changed. In terms of veterinary medicine, when I was in veterinary school, we had 60 students, three women, 57 men. Today, 80% of veterinary students… Read More
You mentioned really early on there were women keepers, but that was in the children’s zoo. Read More
Were there women, when did women keepers start to come, or African American keepers?… Read More