And the saki monkey’s daily diet had 19 different fruits and vegetables in it. And he would not allow, and by then we had a actual, we had a commissary supervisor, retired army sergeant. And he could not buy… You know, restaurants, for example, will buy blemished vegetables and fruits… Read More
Absolutely not. Mehrtens ran- At that time, from the spring-summer of ’73 until ’76, April of ’76 when he was actually fired, he had 100% control of the animal collection. He purchased the animals. He developed the diets for the animals, which is a whole another story. He wrote out… Read More
You talked about the diets. Read More
What were you, what was the story of the diets?… Read More
They could have easily been flown. That was the way they were being moved at the time. But again, I think it showed he didn’t know. He thought that’s what he was supposed to do so. And I’m sure the dealers took a nice cut of whatever the fee was… Read More
Now at the same time, were you able, were you tasked with getting other animals or traveling?… Read More
Or were other people in your staff- Were other people in the staff that were working for him and the zoo tasked with getting additional animals overseas?… Read More
I should go back to college and go back to my professor, Sid Gauthreaux. He had parlayed… There was a little- Clemson campus was a big campus, but he had managed to parlay an old building, a little brick building right smack dab in the middle of the campus. And… Read More
And I learned to be a cynic in that room, (laughs) and I’ve been a cynic all my life. And that trip sort of cemented the fact that, you know, this man who had held himself out, John Mehrtens, as a world’s expert and authority on everything having to do… Read More
And Mehrtens by that time had burned a lot of bridges with the community, with local political leaders, and with his own, with the Zoo Commission. And… Well, let me go back to your trip with getting the tigers. Read More
What lessons did you take away from that?… Read More
Well, (laughs) first of all, I learned there was a big world out there. I think the only place I’d ever been prior to that was the state of Florida. My father didn’t like to travel, and so as a kid growing up, the only place he would go, take… Read More
No, I was general curator. That would have been sometime in, like I said, that would have been right around the time the zoo opened in April of ’74. Things, the zoo went south very quickly. Going all the way back, all the way back to that group of gentlemen… Read More
There was no zoo, there was no revenue. So they would sort of… Mehrtens would on a piece of paper kind of figure out what he thought he needed to pay these people working in horticulture, in the maintenance department, and pay the electric bill. Then divide it by three,… Read More
And thankfully our local utility company, at the time called South Carolina Electric and Gas, allowed us to not pay the bill. The city allowed us to not pay for water and sewer. But they had to pay salaries. So those three governments, the two counties and the city, would… Read More
Fascinating. Now, you…… Read More
So these were the, until you became director, your last title was general curator, or did you continue to move up?… Read More
They’re on their way to the ship, and we made arrangements for you to take a train to Bremen, Germany to meet the tigers and get on the ship,” which is what I did. So I get up on this ship and I asked- I had, one of the officers… Read More
And the ship docked in Miami, and Mehrtens was waiting with his wife and Bill Chase, and who was a Miami animal dealer. And we drove the two tigers to Bill Chase’s compound in Miami, which was like this massive zoo. And we loaded up a truck with, and I’ll… Read More
He refused to believe it. But the significance of that story and the significance of that incident was that I stood up to him and told him, “Sorry, you’re wrong, and you kind of got took.” (laughs) And I don’t know, I can’t explain it, but he just kind of… Read More