Yeah. So this is pretty cool because at this time, this, to me, it’s like probably a more of an evolution of a conservation and joint breeding programs leading to research in zoos. And you were on the early cusp of that. Well, we were early and I will give,… Read More
I think it, I was very fortunate that as a zoologist, many of the senior keepers took pity upon me or were just good guys, some were not, but most of them essentially said when there were circumstances which I hadn’t done something, they’d say, “Step back, son, let me… Read More
And I’ll tell you one quick story about when I was a zoologist, I was walking through the zoo and they were trying to, again, we used tranquilizer, but it was starting out, didn’t use it all the time. There were a lot of methodologies for hand grabbing and doing… Read More
And I knew the principles of roping. I mean, I had roped, but I really wasn’t the world’s greatest, but I knew how to do it. And I commented as I was watching it. I said, “You guys are doing it wrong.” And they looked at me and the one… Read More
And I walked away. And from that day on, reputation is a funny thing. I was, they always, “Mark is an expert roper.” (interviewer laughing) “He’s really good.” I couldn’t do it again. And I tried, never did it again, but your reputation sometimes is built upon hopefully doing things… Read More
You’ve always spoken highly of Pat Sass. Read More
Now, I’m wondering, did the older senior keepers help you out at this time?… Read More
Or were you kind of like, “Hey, you know what to do.” Are you on your own? I mean are the?… Read More
Reptile guy at hearts, yeah? (laughs) I had no, what do I do?… Read More
So I said to him, “I don’t know how to handle it. If you show me how to do it, all I need is one time, and then I’m good, but I need that.” All right. So he goes up and he, (grunting) I said, “Thank you very much.” He… Read More
And then later, when I booked it, I had to book it all over the place and it was fun. And I would go out and that part of my job was going out and talking with the people. Was ambassador for the zoo. I was ambassador for the zoo. Read More
No. Well, yes. In a way, she had. We would take the animals from the Children’s Zoo every day and load them up. And Pat Sass was, she, one of her father’s friends had homing pigeons and we would take, she would bring them down. We would take the homing… Read More
We would have milking, as a city kid, there had been one place where you could see this in the city called Hawthorn Mellody Farms which had long since come and gone, which you could see milking. So here at Lincoln Park Zoo, yeah, it was very popular. So another… Read More
Can you talk about that and how did that work?… Read More
Well, part of my job as zoologist was to run the traveling zoo and the traveling zoo was two units, ultimately, big bus units that would go out and go to senior citizens homes at the time, ’cause we were Park District, go to Park District day camps. That was… Read More
And that was one of my first jobs as a summer helper too, was to help bring the zoologist, the animals, so he could talk about them. And the first guy who I did that for was Saul Kitchener. And we had this, we had exotic animals. It wasn’t like… Read More
So how do you move animals that you have to?… Read More
Dairy cows and steers and things like that. Well, if it’s outside of the purview of the zoo, but on Park District land, you have a much freer methodology of moving and replacing animals. So when they had the livestock exposition at the amphitheater, I’m going back years, they would… Read More
Like a milking demonstration, I mean, who thought, you know, who knew, right?… Read More
What about the farm in the zoo?… Read More