Going from the other perspective first, we had support internally from the AZA, the elephant TAG people, the AZA board. We had supporting letters and documentation from the WAZA board. We had and got support from major international zoo directors, personally, Zurich, Switzerland and Leipzig and other zoos, (indistinct) and… Read More
What was your board saying at this time during this up and down kind of thing?… Read More
And what outside support were you getting, if any?… Read More
Personally, I can honestly say that I had 20 minutes the night before where I thought it had collapsed. And that was when we first heard that there might be an injunction where we couldn’t bring the elephants out on the second at the attempt to shut us down. And… Read More
I mean, I’d always had fulfilled on all my promises and dreams. They were entrusted with the secret. I mean, we waited up the last minute to tell the board, the full board and everything. And as far as the arrival date, somebody called and said they’re leaving Dallas. And… Read More
Was the low point the lawsuits?… Read More
And how did you personally, you’re the director, how did you personally cope and persevere through this roller coaster of things?… Read More
And I’m gonna throw a lot of things. Read More
And Lynn Kramer and Allen Reukauf, after we caught ’em up and put ’em in the bomas, they spent some extra time there observing and watching. We had 24 hour guards on ’em there. We were paying, I mean, this was top secret. They couldn’t even hire new people on… Read More
They were all post nursing. I mean, there were five or six would’ve been the youngest one. You’d never know for sure, but we think six was the youngest. I did, six and seven, nine. Our female we think was about 17 and she’d had at least the one calf… Read More
And it’s added an extra step and light years to her life, I’m sure. Now the importation takes 28 months. You’ve kind of talked about some things. Read More
Was the high point getting the animals here?… Read More
Another one is due to cycle. But it was everybody’s dream. Read More
And one thing, the big question was how do we separate up these elephants?… Read More
Who got which elephants in the bomas?… Read More
And Stephanie who is now 48, 49 this summer, you know, what she was gonna think. She had never seen another elephant since she was two years old other than her one. Read More
Was she gonna be happy to see ’em like my grandmother was and get tired of me after three months, when are they leaving?… Read More
And she freaked out. I was not there, I was still in Africa ‘cos I didn’t come home on that plane. I’ll explain that later, but they unloaded the smallest female first, the one without the tusk. And Stephanie had been moved over and been the test animal a couple… Read More
She was the boss. And even though she was bigger than our female, she never once made any attempt to be the head honcho. And Stephanie let him into the water and let him out of the water, disciplined him. It was so heartwarming to see this ‘cos I came… Read More
Came up with this island in the middle, a bridge over the island. Elephants can come out, they can be behind you, next to you, in front of you. You become part of the herd. You’re immersed in the actual exhibit and it worked. So we had two great features… Read More