And it was going on as good a knowledge you can get. These were wild elephants out there. And thank goodness I’ve got a can-do board that said they would get it done. And there were some challenges. The economy had never fully recovered. And it’s just now really the… Read More
It hit our membership. I mean, these were our members. These $90,000 jobs putting in rivets and running lines and cables and things like this. Wichita is a major aircraft manufacturing center in the United States and it affected the whole town, so it made fundraising hard. Thankfully, and we’d… Read More
We went over there, it was 11 days before we could actually do the shipping out. We knew that paperwork was falling into place. And you know, you had funny stories about when you see the mamba going over towards the crates where the crates were in storage and lifting… Read More
I went over to Africa with only my board president and my major fundraiser knowing, the first time to look to see about the possibility. I came back and met with him privately and said we can do this, but we need to be willing to commit a million dollars… Read More
They knew all that, that this was the easy part. And the million dollars, I said we don’t need to have it right now this minute ‘cos that’ll get paid out over time. And we didn’t identify where that million dollars was coming from because as I mentioned earlier, I… Read More
We’d gotten exceptions for that, but basically I can still remain remember the Reillys, the three zoos and the logistics people that we were working with that had done these thousands of elephant transfers, the trucks and handling of all this, we basically looked at each other and said the… Read More
And the taxes involved with that day, it was the most physically and mentally stressful thing any of us had ever been through. And two of the people had actually been in the South African special forces at one time and they said nothing like that. I mean, it was… Read More
And they tore in the forklifts, the wrap up things to keep the urine and the feces within. And so they flew to Wichita and unloaded six more. And the flight from Wichita to Dallas, apparently enough of the urine and stuff had gone down into the cables or controls… Read More
And after 24 hours, it was an extra $7,500 an hour. And we ended up being a day and a half late from the original time. And thank goodness Mike Vester was able to beat him back down to the original price, but the 747 parked on the runway made… Read More
They were moving rhinos in that were needing attention and food and care to live. And it was real clear that they had made a thing that if we didn’t get these elephants they were gonna have to cull ’em. And we were at the point on the airport that… Read More
The first thing he said was four of ’em have to stay here, we can’t do this. And we said no, no, no, that doesn’t work that way. We’re getting all 17. Well, by six o’clock when we didn’t have more than, I think we had two crates on the… Read More
And they didn’t have a K loader, which is the loader you use for putting the crate on the thing to raise up to slide in. We had to bring up a K loader from South Africa, so you’ve gotta get that through customs going from South Africa into Swaziland. Read More
He has the power to dismiss parliament. He believes very much in conservation. He’s I don’t wanna say light handed, but that might be the easiest way. But we knew that there were people in Swaziland that didn’t want to see these elements leave their country. We ended up setting… Read More
We went through protocol, how to shake hands. We got called in a little after midnight and I can tell you, it doesn’t bother me at all. Part of the protocol is we had to get down on our hands and knees and crawl in, and as low as you… Read More
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