Well, I think the trips, certainly for the public who through a society or whether it’s just general public, it provides an opportunity for awareness of nature far beyond anything you can see on TV. You’re right in it. I know my first trip to Africa, I was in total… Read More
Oh, there is a bench, not associated with that. Oh. actually I took a group to Africa one time. And the group that went to Africa bought a bench for the zoo ’cause we had a number of benches that had a commemorative plaque on it. And this one says,… Read More
(laughter) How did you, just ’cause you mentioned Africa, do you feel that the trips that some zoos do, many are important as part of an educational process, a philanthropic process, what do they do if anything?… Read More
Is there a bench also associated with it?… Read More
There’s also a bench isn’t there?… Read More
There is the what?… Read More
(laughter) It’s funny. Yeah, there is a Canada goose, a bronze Canada goose at the Oklahoma City Zoo, it says something like, “In recognition of service as director of the Oklahoma City Zoo from 1985 to 2000,” or something like that. And they wanted to have a commemoration party or… Read More
(laughter) How did you feel about that?… Read More
It’s happened not too long ago with a jaguar in Denver, these accidents unfortunately will continue to happen because it’s the human element and what do you do about that?… Read More
On different subject, can you tell us anything about a goose statue and the commemorative plaque?… Read More
And it’s happened how many times with elephants. Read More
How do you instill into other keepers, you’ve got to pay attention?… Read More
You can’t do things that are gonna jeopardize you. I had a flat rule and this may sound silly but I always believed it. That when I inter interviewed a keeper and if they said, “Oh, I love animals,” that always caused me to pay attention because there’s a difference… Read More
Well, certainly you have to find out exactly what happened. I know that I gathered everybody together, I started asking questions, a lot of the keepers who were not present when this happened felt that what happened was not caused by human error. You’ve got to ask a lot of… Read More
I think when you have accidents like that and this girl’s still alive but how many accidents do we know about where the keeper isn’t alive, where it’s led to a fatal injury and how do you talk about that?… Read More
What do you think directors in general, that you could teach them could learn from this type of experience?… Read More
And so, eventually the medical team got there and took her to the hospital. She was very badly mauled, she lost her arm. And it was an accident that probably shouldn’t have happened. As we know, the majority of accidents that happen in zoos are keeper human error. At the… Read More
And this was a person from the horticulture crew and apparently the keeper had said, “Do you wanna pet the baby?” And that was enough to alarm the mother because here was a strange face and we all know what that can cause. And as a result, she was in… Read More
She kept saying something about her arm and there were two people with her, one was a keeper and the other one was one of our security people. And he kept looking at me, when she’d say something about her arm, he kept looking at me. Well, she had a… Read More
Can you give us an overview of what happened and how did this particular incident affect you as a director and how did it affect the zoo?… Read More