So we called the fire department and they came and they said, “Well, we’ll loan you our snorkel, but if there’s a fire, we have to leave.” And this is middle of the night. It’s like at midnight. So they get the snorkel in position and the cat’s just frozen. Read More
Now, ideally when you noose an animal, you don’t just want it, again, trick of the trade. I guess a lot of stuff is common sense. You don’t want around the neck, you want it around the neck and the shoulder so you’re not strangling the animals. Sure. That makes… Read More
So, and then there were ropes, (clears throat) that you could automatically let them loose. I mean, we did all that. So Eddie gets up there, he grabs it and he could only get around the cat’s neck. And as he pulls, now, remember it’s midnight, we’ve got all this… Read More
It was so surreal and they’re all looking. It’s just like, one guy in the middle and all these guys. And all of a sudden, the cat starts to go, (imitates coughing) and he starts to breathe. And to a person, to a man, all these firemen, ’cause they’re watching… Read More
And we’d like to, ‘what’s going on?’ And we saw a large cat, looks like a bobcat or a lynx or something.” I went, “Well, what’s the chances on LaSalle Street?… Read More
Not much.” But we went out there and indeed, I went with the vet and the curator of reptiles, Eddie Almandarz, and indeed, who was a mentor of mine, indeed, we looked up in this big old oak tree and there was a bobcat. Wow. Read More
I mean, there was no mistake in it, but how do you get up there?… Read More
You’ve spoken of the secret zoo. What does that mean?… Read More
And can you talk about maybe this bobcat on LaSalle Street or the cobra in the house?… Read More
Well, the secret zoo is essentially when you were holding animals privately that you shouldn’t be holding, the alligator in the bathtub in the basement, and you don’t want anybody to know about it. So if your son is playing with your next door neighbor and you have five rattlesnakes… Read More
I think it was Pat Sammarco then, Pat Sass, all took the exam. And I mean, there weren’t a lot of other women who were taking them from outside, but they did pretty instantaneously and they did well. And all of a sudden, they were now being paid had a… Read More
I mean, someone might say, “Well, they can’t lift or whatever.” You get people to help you. I mean, it’s always a team effort to do whatever you wanna do, but it was a positive thing when women came into the workforce. Well, and I’m thinking, this is kind of… Read More
But how did women coming in as keepers affect the zoo?… Read More
Well, I think it affected the zoo, women keepers affected zoo in a very positive way. They brought with different job skills or ways of looking at it. There were no differences and I think, again, if you get 10 women, some are gonna be excellent, some are not gonna… Read More
It was, at the time, it was up to the curatorial staff to kind of take a lead if they wanted to. Yeah. Had good foresight. If I could switch gears a little bit. First women keepers were hired in the early 1970s is my understanding. Read More
And as were if you could talk about Pat Sass whose name has come up as one of the very first women keepers at Lincoln Park Zoo, how’d she get the job and why was it possible for her to get the job?… Read More
Well, I think what happened at the zoo at the time was there were no women keepers. And when the civil service exam started, women weren’t allowed to take the exam ’cause it said male high school diploma. That was an animal keeper at the time. When the next civil… Read More
So you were pursuing the advanced degree at this time and I’m wondering, did the zoo help? And if so, how?… Read More
Well, I think at one time, the curators or the zoologists and certainly those positions were, it had a lot of latitude. And I said to Dennis Merritt, and I said to some other people, but mostly to Dennis, I said, “I saw, I’d like to do my work on… Read More
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