The zoo was small. Back then it was 25 acres, and we didn’t have that many animals. Now we did increase the collection and increase the exhibits. So it got to the point where we did have to hire a education curator. And we developed a curator, mammals curator, birds. Read More
When you came in, were you able to hire other curators or people that would assist you other than a senior or a zoo manager?… Read More
So there was no problem getting animals for the zoo. And we didn’t really think about education or about conservation. Education, yeah. I’ve always felt strongly about that. And we did develop an education curator position, and had him go out to the schools. I had been doing it up… Read More
Were you able… You said you hired an education curator. Read More
Well, I felt that education was the main thing for zoos. Sure, they were entertaining, and sure some of the bigger zoos could do research. Conservation, yeah. But back in those days, conservation wasn’t a big topic in zoos because animals were readily available. If lion died you just ordered… Read More
Now, did you have a vision of what education would be like at the zoo when you took over?… Read More
And were you doing things like this in Miami when you were director?… Read More
Oh yeah, we did a lot. In fact, I was doing two regular children’s television shows weekly shows at the same time. And then did annual shows for the Ottoman society, all using live animals, all on television. Read More
And it was a disaster. But in spite of that, I still later on kept doing them anyway (chuckles). Oh my, that was my introduction to doing live animal shows. Read More
And I said to the lady moderator, what happened?… Read More
She said, well, we couldn’t get the bus to bring them out today. I said, oh my gosh. You know, I know something about reptiles, but I haven’t studied about these individual animals. I was relying on the kids to touch them and see that the turtle had a hard… Read More
I had a small crocodile, couple lizards, a couple of snakes, a turtle. And went into the station and walked into the room. and there were no kids. Read More
Well, way back in Cincinnati, for instance, we got a call from a local station, a local TV station. That was the educational TV station. And they wanted somebody representing the zoo to bring an animal out for their children’s program. So they called my boss and he said, “Well… Read More
The kids were… Young kids that age are a joy to work with. They would ask all kinds of questions, and everything was ooh and on about, oh this eats that or look at the teeth on that. Well, after the show, the station manager came down and he said,… Read More
And my neighbors all felt sorry for me, I guess, but it was a good exercise. And what surprised you about the job as you were doing that on a day-to-day basis. Oh, nothing really surprised me. I mean every day was a kind of a surprise ’cause I never… Read More
Yeah, in the first year I worked 364 days (chuckles). It tells you what my life was like. And we did manage to start taking a couple weeks off now to go to Sanabei Island. But it was work all the time. Fortunately, we lived about a half a mile… Read More
Were you still the veterinarian?… Read More
If you injected intramuscularly, they caused too much tissue damage. So now you are a new zoo director, looking for a challenge. Read More
And what was your day like?… Read More
And so you just kept injecting until you got the right dose. And there were a lot of deaths with it. It just didn’t work out that well. And of course the animals were paralyzed. They could still feel all the pain, they just couldn’t react to it. So it… Read More