We did that and that gave mixed results. It probably easier to get them into the group, but after time they appeared to not be doing well. We had health issues which were a problem. But at the same time we were raising others that weren’t in the groups at… Read More
We lost 4 or 5 babies and you can’t put up with that. So we had top change something. So we were going to take all the babies and hand raise them at birth and we did. We got a lot of criticism for doing it but we gad babies… Read More
Females carrying a dead baby and we don’t know why they’d died. But carrying it around for a couple of days after its dead. So we had to think about what we were doing we had to do something different. Some people had hand raised gorillas we were going to… Read More
But we didn’t have a helluva lot of space but outside we had mostly enclosures those were the first enclosures for the great apes but before we decided to focus on the gorillas, we sent the orange (indistinct) we sent the chimpanzees down to Louisiana and we were gonna focus… Read More
When I was a little boy my father took me to the circus. I was about seven. We went to see (indistinct) circus in Boston and Ill never forget seeing Gargantua, it was glass box I was in or it was a cage it wasn’t a glass box. It was… Read More
Elephants are social animals, very social animals. They continue to amaze us with what they do. They don’t need tremendous space but they need space and so no one should exhibit them in small yards anymore. We know more than that. Because we want to keep more elephants together. That’s… Read More
If water is abundantly available then no. Years ago, a few zoos did exhibits for cheetahs. Then they did these long race track exhibits for cheetahs and cheetahs can run. Them not thinking, when do cheetahs run. The only time they running is when they hunting. Now unless you’re gonna… Read More
There’s no reason why we can’t keep elephants. I don’t think we too far off, too many generations away from people not having elephants to see in Africa or Asia. There won’t be any left. They’ll be gone and maybe the only place you’ll see them is in zoos. But… Read More
What’s your position on zoos maintaining elephants?… Read More
They did it better than some of the men carrying 150 pound bale of hay or bag of grain or whatever it was and now both zoos, high proportion of the staff are women keepers. What is your view regarding the hot topic of zoos maintaining elephants in their collection… Read More
They would try and (making mumbling sounds) and I say, “I don’t care how you doing, you’ll do it.” The bale is 150 pounds. Break it open. Take a wheelbarrow, put half in it at a time in the wheelbarrow you can just push it yourself. Don’t ask men to… Read More
How you going to do it?… Read More
I brought women in when after interviews could not send them away. I only invite to them was that I had to ask them the question, you got a hundred and fifty pound bale of hay or a hundred pound bag of grain. You gotta take it from point a… Read More
Well I trained a few trainees over the years and one of the first things I did with them was I made up a schedule for them to work with the keepers re installation of the park so there was 3 days one building one keeper and 5 days or… Read More
Well Elsie and Conways wife got into talking a lot more about other things than Bill and I did. Sue was a lovely lady, I would love to be able to show her some of what he has written. She doesn’t even have a computer. She never learned to use… Read More
Or was it strictly business?… Read More
Did you talk about different things other than the zoo because you were neighbors?… Read More
Neither of which they had nor was there a lot of interest in having them on their part either. But they were wonderful neighbors and we see a lot of them over there where we lived. Read More
It worked out all right. They had some kids at home with them and we had our own private entrance from our area where we lived and we had electric gate, kids always outside, all of them. Bat cave lets go in the bat cave. And then we would get… Read More
Our kids and Elsie would often go upstairs during the early evening in the winter because it was so cold by the glass. My desk was downstairs in the corner kind of brick walls. It was fine. But we were concerned about the kids being isolated. You know when I… Read More