Did that first public relations surprise you the amount. No, we knew a strange looking animal. If it it’d been a mouse or something we would’ve never gotten it. But it was such a strange looking animal, and an animal that’s one species representing an entire order. So I guess… Read More
So I’ll have to give our veterinarian at the time, Ron Samson all the credit. ‘Cause he developed a formula using (indistinct) which was a formula use for big cats primarily. And he adjusted it as he thought need be and hand raised this aardvark. And we went way out… Read More
What were you trying to do there?… Read More
With the African… Well, the small animals, the African exhibit area we had porcupines, big crested porcupines. Aardvark. Aardvark were interesting. We came in one day in 1967, September 67. And we found this baby aardvark in the exhibit. And so we didn’t know what to do. And we tried… Read More
Did you do anything with small mammals, or the Africa wild scene?… Read More
But he was a interesting guy to work with. He went to Brownsville, Texas, as a director there. I remember he had one horrible experience there. He used LSD on an elephant. The elephant went crazy, killed himself. But he was Warren Thomas. That was the thing he would do. Read More
You mentioned the elephant house that you put together. Read More
Warren Thomas was a classmate of mine. He actually got part of a veterinary degree, I guess, in Peru. And then got accepted to Ohio state. And he was in my class, yeah. He was an interesting guy. When I first talked to Warren Thomas, I’d ask him a question… Read More
That Warren was a classmate of yours?… Read More
Yes, Len Goss was one. Being veterinarian and then the director of then Cleveland zoo. Len was a nice guy, I liked him. And yes, he was one that I contacted. Warren Thomas was a character. Occasionally I’d talk to him, but (chuckles) he was a character. As far as… Read More
Yeah. Read More
Were there certain zoo directors that you sought advice from?… Read More
Well, Marlin was kind of a hero of mine ’cause of a zoo parade thing. And I had visions of being something like that one day until I had that disaster television show in Cincinnati. And that kind of tame me down a bit. But he was laid back very… Read More
Well, one of the things I enjoyed most, I guess, about being a zoo director was getting to know other people in the zoo field. Marlin Perkins, the Bill Conways, whatever. Those people had just been kind of legends up until the time got a chance to meet them and… Read More
What was their outlook on the zoo field, or did it stress certain things?… Read More
What’d you love about being zoo director?… Read More
We built a couple other, I guess you’d call them pit type exhibits for things like aardvark, for instance. Peccaries, small animals like that. And they worked out well, but I wanted to develop a professional staff. And so we tried that as best we could with the funds we… Read More
Were there things that were non zoo director?… Read More
I wanna do these. Well we wanted to build natural habitat exhibits for one thing. And we did do one mode exhibit, an elephant exhibit. And the mode was actually the natural ground water because we were only a few feet above sea level there in Crandon Park Zoo. And… Read More
They can’t believe it, you know. Their eyes pop up, and say, oh, well, this is wonderful. And that’s a very rewarding experience. What type of… When you first became a director, were there certain things that you thought, I’m gonna try and implement here, projects for exhibits. This is… Read More