Well I one day was reading the, you know, the newsletter that came out from what was called then the AAZPA, and I saw that there was a job opening for a curator at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. You wanted to stop, now wait a minute. You went… Read More
You’re, how’d you find out about that first job?… Read More
Okay, I did well okay, when I left Omaha Zoo, at Omaha Zoo I made, when I was at the zoo in Omaha, I made contact of people who used the zoo, like Omaha Zoo, as a place to ship things from to other places, believe it or not. There… Read More
So you were getting experience not only in mammals, but birds and reptiles?… Read More
Not much reptiles, although we did have two, we did have some, the big giant tortoises. Not Galapagos, but you know, the others. There really wasn’t anything else, reptile wise. So now you have been at Omaha Zoo from ’66 to ’68, you’ve left the zoo. Read More
How did you develop plans for the next phase of your career?… Read More
As general curator at the Omaha Zoo were there things that you were learning then, layering on, that would help your understanding of the working of a zoo?… Read More
Well I think, yes I think so. I mean it’s, I had more to do with, I had more to do with budgeting than I ever did there at Oklahoma City certainly. And things like that, and personnel problems. I mean, personnel issues, certainly. Personnel challenges. Okay challenges, whatever, personnel… Read More
And how to manage a collection, ’cause I was managing a collection, even though I was also doing the grunt work too, for most of the time that I was there. Which once again I didn’t mind doing, I liked doing it. Read More
And so we went down there and they said, “Well there’s not, we can’t give you a test.” And I said, “Yeah, why is that?… Read More
I’m perfectly willing to take it.” And he said, “Well, we have no evidence a crime was committed.” I said, “Oh, okay.” That was the end of that. So I have my, also and that may be my own fantasy, but I have a feeling that somebody from the society… Read More
And they said, “Oh yes.” And he, they gave him my name and Leroy Thomas. Well we didn’t live actually, in the city of Omaha. And they called us up and said they wanted to talk to us. And we said, “Hey great, we’ll talk to you.” So we came… Read More
And I remember talking to them about it and saying something that, “Well the male cheater was surplus, you know?” And they said, “Well how would you know it’s a male cheetah?… Read More
We didn’t say anything about it.” And I said, “Because that’s the only one they would’ve experimented with, because they already had one, they didn’t need two in fact, so that’s why they would do it.” And the guy said, the detective said, “Well why, would you take a lie… Read More
And I can tell you right now that, this is one, I sorta forgot this. I’m remembering it now. But after I quit, they had got some cheetahs in the zoo before I had left, and there was a surplus of males. And at that time they were talking, Thomas… Read More
And they called the police in, and the police, the Omaha police, you know, asked questions of them and well, they probably asked the question which was obvious, “Are there any employees that have left recently,” you know?… Read More
And I’m sure that that was the case, and- Did you have a direction you wanted to go in?… Read More
I mean did you know, “I’m gonna leave and I’m going somewhere else,” that- No I really didn’t, I really didn’t. But let me, I can tell you some experiences that were very negative experiences with him. It was a large area to one side of the zoo, and we… Read More
I don’t really, really even remember, but they were in there and there was one of them having a medical problem, and it had a prolapsed rectum. And I wanted, we wanted him to fix it, you know Simmons to fix it. And he said, “Yeah, I’ll fix it.” And… Read More
And that was one of the things he liked to do with his gun. He had on the zoo car, he got a zoo car, and on the zoo car, he mounted a rifle. He drove around the zoo taking great delight in shooting predators and God knows what all. Read More