Because many times with a bird, when this starts looking bad, it can get bad real quick. So, just looking at the health and welfare of the collection, make sure that everybody’s looking good, talking to the keepers, “How’s this doing?” “How’s that doing?” I was a real task master… Read More
Management philosophy. Yes, the first thing I did was obviously, I went around to look at the collection and I was looking at a lot of things. Read More
How were you interacting with your employees in your division?… Read More
What was your management philosophy?… Read More
Did you have to go out in the field to do any of this or not?… Read More
No. No, I didn’t do any expeditions at St. Louis in terms of field collecting. During this time that you’re the curator of birds, you were making daily rounds of your collection all the time. Read More
Birds weren’t hard to get at that time, they’ve become more difficult. Some of these were captive raised. Some of them were imported from dealers under special permits. I think it’s harder to do things today than it certainly was then. You’ve got the quarantine issues that are more stringent. Read More
Were these animals, were these birds difficult to acquire for the exhibit or how did you acquire them?… Read More
How are we going to put trees and all of the artifacts in there that we need to have to tell the story and then we wanna make sure that we have this proper specimens to what we’re trying to do. It was interesting that when you came into the… Read More
But in the mixed aviary exhibits, we tried to tell a story ’cause it was more of an educational benefit than trying to identify every little bird in the exhibit. And you couldn’t keep up with it. You mentioned some unusual birds. Read More
So, a lot of thought had to go toward what’s this space really gonna be best for?… Read More
How are we going to design it?… Read More
If we were having a cock-of-the-rock exhibit, it’s gonna look like a tropical exhibit with a cocks-of-the-rock in it, we had to make sure that we were gonna have cocks-of-the-rocks. If we were going to have a small exhibit that is going to tell the story of toucans or something… Read More
And with this new exhibit, you had to bring in new birds, new specimens for this?… Read More
We had a game plan of what we wanted to show. Now, I’m pretty much of a supporter of ecological type of exhibits. In other words, this is a shorebird exhibit. And so, we’re gonna design the exhibit to look like a shore with the way the pools are and… Read More
Were you involved in any type of fundraising?… Read More
I was not involved in any type of fundraising, that was done by others. Read More
The St. Louis Zoo is funded by a zoo-museum tax district. And it’s a tax on real and personal property for people who live in the city, as well as St. Louis County. And that money is taken and given to some institutions and the zoo receives the largest portion… Read More
It was indeed the first major design I was ever involved in. Read More
How did it get funded?… Read More