But our administration building and the society’s administration building pretty much wiped out. The one thing we did do in designing that zoo is we had, because we’re on a big block of a lytic limestone, and our moats were dug outta limestone. But if you went down 12 feet,… Read More
We trained them so that they felt comfortable. And so I kept the shoot team at the zoo as Andrew was coming in and we kept our vet at the zoo. We were all staying in the hospital, which was a brand new building. Very secure, very well built. We… Read More
And that’s because we were on 760 acres now it was all fenced in and we had a five mile fence as well as a five mile moat that went around the property. But if animals got loose for any reason, they were in a big pine and palmetto force. Read More
So we were real concerned about that. And we began collecting as many animals as we could and securing them in what we thought were secure buildings. Hoofstock, we couldn’t do anything there. They had holding pins in the back that were chain link. And we just, it was like… Read More
And you know, so we gathered everything up that we could. Now our primates and things like the bears and the tigers, our night houses that we built were solid structures. They were all concrete and steel. They weren’t going anywhere. So those animals, all we had to do was… Read More
Well, we began watching Andrew as it came over a Lutheran and, and some of the outer islands. And there was a guy named Hard Cross who was a weatherman, became famous because of Andrew Norcross was his name. Not Hard Cross Norcross. And at one point, about 72 hours… Read More
How were the animals protected?… Read More
Did staff stay at the zoo, the whole beyond?… Read More
What precautions were taken ahead of time, if any?… Read More
What happened as the hurricane get?… Read More
Can you talk about your role as the general curator?… Read More
So it was like, we need to move the zoo, protect the collection, get it away from hurricanes. And that was a big selling point to get it down to homestead. Can you talk about the 1992 Hurricane Andrew hit, the Miami Metro Zoo. Read More
And it swamped CBI game. And that was one of the things that they really pushed about getting that collection off is it was so exposed to hurricanes. Read More
I mean, the highest point in CBI game was like three feet, right?… Read More
And by 79 I’d become the general curator at Cran. And then Gordon Hubble and I orchestrated the move of the entire collection down to the New Zoo site over a period of about three years. And we opened a part of Miami Metro Zoo in 1981. And we began… Read More
And Terry Strouser, who was a artist at the time and worked at the zoo, became one of the architect designers for the build out. He later went to Disney and helped them build Wild Kingdom and Gordon Hubble, and then a number of people in Dade County who were… Read More
I knew I wanted to work in zoos at the time because I’d learned a lot from Phil and what he was doing. And Phil at that time was working with, with a gentleman called Vernon Kiley, if you know Vernon. And they were really beginning to get the zoo… Read More
And actually at that time as curator of half the zoo. It wasn’t a curator of mammals or a curator of birds or I had to manage all of it, which was an incredible learning experience. And so did that. And then in 78, they really started taking off building… Read More
I worked large hoof stock for a while. And on every time I moved to a different area, I just, I learned more and more about zoos zoo operations and what we couldn’t do. And by my second year down there, they had a test, an opening for a curatorial… Read More
So I left that fall in January. At the end of the semester, I had my degree a year in advance. And I went down and started at Theran Park Zoo as a reptile keeper. I think I got paid $6,700 a year. What year was that? That was in… Read More