And we had woken up that morning to line up and get all the crates ready. And we sat there and waited and waited ‘cos we couldn’t dart the first elephant out of the bomas until we got the okay. And when we finally got it and it started raining… Read More
And you know, we had a plan and I basically was going on a skiing vacation and Dr. Bryant was going on a special zoo accreditation inspection and then vacation afterwards and we disappeared. And everybody at our zoo thought it was gonna be the deputy director and doc going… Read More
I mean, everything from a K loader for a 747. Got a brand new airport that has three Airlink planes coming in, little teeny things serviced only from Johannesburg. The runway’s big enough, but it’s only got lighting on one side so the 747 can’t land at nighttime. Read More
You can’t say oh, 50 feet to the left of the lights, you know?… Read More
And when the permit was finally issued, we figured we’d be sued, the government would be sued within 24, 48 hours. And nothing happened for a week. ‘Cos in the past, on the San Diego, Tampa, there were 11 animal rights groups that formed a coalition that sued the federal… Read More
The judge brought it up in conference calls and said, you realize that they have a valid import permit. They could bring these elephants in right now. And they said they realized that. And so a day or two after that conversation with the lawyer, we had a Sunday phone… Read More
And that could we sneak these elephants out of Africa?… Read More
It has to do with elephants coming into our environment, but it’s a matter of getting published in the federal register. So we thought, and this was the only blip that we really had that had detrimental consequences in a way, had worked out when they were gonna make their… Read More
They were gonna be culled. And it’s so stated in the correspondence that they were required to give our government for the permitting information. And instead of releasing that information Monday, it was a month later before they finally got it in the federal register. So we got pounded by… Read More
I mean, and they had the highest visitation of their native people seeing these national parks than any other place in Africa and at no charge to the kids. One was like going to a zoo in May and school. There were 30 buses there and they would walk out… Read More
We actually had originally planned for even a little bit longer than that to get used to people, get used to eating cut broughs and so forth. Meanwhile, this drought had starting going into the third year was decimating the countryside. I mean, they lost huge amounts of cattle. And… Read More
We had the interesting things you don’t think about. One, you have to knock all the elephants down in the area because you just can’t go in and get– Explain what that is. Tranquilization shot from a tranquilizer dart from a helicopter. And you know, we in the zoo world,… Read More
And plus I had our veterinarian from our zoo and a veterinarian from Omaha and Lynn Kramer from Dallas plus the three veterinarians that we had in the field. I’ve got a picture of five elephants in one shot all knocked down that we’re having to treat, keep cool, keep… Read More
And because of the drought and the conditions deterioration over time, that got increased to 18 before this was through. But you know, we put together a budget and talked about a relationship and the discussion that this was a job that we were gonna need to have gonads because… Read More
We also knew that we were gonna have a public relations issue in which we all needed to act in unison, and this was gonna be bigger than our individual departments and so we hired Joe Allred and PCI to handle that end. And eventually when the time came, we… Read More
And Mike Bester had a relationship with them from earlier. This is a country that most of the animals had been exterminated by the 50s and the Reilly family with the blessing of the king developed first on their own property the first facility, Mlilwane, and then on the Kings… Read More
Well, to start with, it’s every kid’s dream. They go to Africa and bring animals back. I mean, that was my dream was the dream of old of going to get the animals for the zoo. I mean, that was right out of Dr. Seuss. You know, if I ran… Read More
And I had earlier, when I first took over the zoo as director, had that decision, like do I send them out for breeding or do I hope that artificial insemination can be done?… Read More
Well, that took a little bit longer than thought ‘cos I decided to keep and wait for that. And by the time we got it, it was too late. We did try it. But we now know that elephants under 20 years of age, if they haven’t had that first… Read More
We had Ken Stansell, who retired as the acting director of the Fish and Wildlife Service who had been head of the permit office when the elephants were imported 13 years earlier by Dallas, I mean by Tampa and San Diego. And we went over what we thought the options… Read More