And unfortunately, I learned, I got my first lesson at how heartbreaking it can be when, you know, dealing with animals, is that the female had a parasite problem and she died. And that was a very, to me, you know, it was a real tragic, tragic thing, But that’s… Read More
And Oklahoma City was, most people wouldn’t remember this, but at one they were, they wanted to get, and this is before my time, before Thomas’s time, had wanted to get an elephant ’cause they didn’t have one. And they wrote a, somebody wrote a song about it, “I Want… Read More
No, the primate collection. Well, it was a relatively, it wasn’t a gigantic building or area, the primate building, which the zoo had built before Warren Thomas had come there. Read More
And it was not a huge collection, but Thomas, you know what Thomas was always known for, even from the very beginning, for getting rare animals and for able to make deals with people, you know?… Read More
Dealers and people, even in Africa and other places. And he was, it was actually a very good one. It was a very good one. By the time I got there, we did have gorillas and we had, supposedly they were mountain gorillas, but they weren’t, what they were really… Read More
He took, take some hair and you put it under the microscope. And if light doesn’t pass through it, it’s one of those others, it’s either a manyema or a mountain gorilla, because it will pass through lowland gorilla hair. And it was, I think people, they still don’t know… Read More
What kinda collection did you find when you walked in there?… Read More
You already knew it, but for us, what kind of- You mean for the whole zoo?… Read More
And he went down to Botswana, and he’s the first guy that used it in Africa. Read More
That’d be the Palmer?… Read More
Yes Palmer, yeah exactly. Read More
Technically, from the city of Oklahoma City, I was just, I was a keeper, but Warren Thomas made me curator of primates. No salary increase mind you, but certainly I was curator of primates, but I did everything the keepers do, which was the greatest thing I could have done,… Read More
Now when you got this first job, were you thinking beyond that?… Read More
Or you were just, “Hey this is a happy, got a job.” Right, I’m happy, I’m working in the zoo. And Warren Thomas was a mentor for me, one of two in my life, I think I had, or three maybe. And We had our differences on occasion, but he… Read More
Well, I got my master’s degree. And then you took the job. Read More
Okay, so this was your, you were hired as a keeper, as a scientist?… Read More
Now that was in 1963, approximately?… Read More
Yeah, yeah. Read More
And you had graduated already?… Read More
And so I went to see Thomas, Warren Thomas, and I said, “Do you know any zoo jobs that are available anywhere?” And he, some thing had went off in his head and he said, “Well, what about here?” I hadn’t really thought of that, I really didn’t. And I… Read More