I got in the pickup truck and I drove around the zoo and there was no lights in the zoo. It was perfectly dark. Couldn’t find the hyenas. So I figured, okay, I’m gonna have to walk around. So I got outta the truck, and I started walking around the… Read More
He ran back there with that dart and the other two were sniffing around what’s going on, what’s going on. So I went up while they were there, walked right up to them and shot the other two. Had all three of them knocked out within well, 45 minutes after… Read More
So I figured the only thing I could do would be to try and shoot them with a capture gun, and tranquilize them. So I drove up to the hospital, I (indistinct) up six darts, figuring I could miss each animal one time. But I had three of them. I… Read More
How am I gonna catch three hyenas in the middle of the night?… Read More
And he did this for a couple years, and they started to break. He’d just wore them out (chuckles). But one night he called me, it was 11 o’clock at night and I’d just gone to bed. And he says, “Doc.” He says, “The hyenas got out and they chased… Read More
I kept thinking all the time, what am I gonna do?… Read More
Yeah and a little bit of courage too I guess. One night of that, we had a night watchman who was in his early seventies and essentially deaf. I mean, you’d have to yell at him to make him hear you. And I used to go out at night at… Read More
Well, let me think on that a second. We had some interesting things come up, fortunately that we could resolve. Read More
Where your sense of humor came in handy?… Read More
Funny situations?… Read More
Absolutely nothing. And after he became zoo director, he used to go to the zoo conferences, and instead of going to the scientific meetings, he’d go off and play golf, or go out and party. And was several years after that, my colleagues in the zoo profession thought I was… Read More
You’re no longer zoo director?… Read More
Right. I was assigned to be the education director. And I worked with Bob. You know, he’d get a call on the phone about an animal, and I could tell he was talking about an animal and my desk was right next to his. So I’d write out something for… Read More
And couldn’t get an answer. Well, couple months later I was removed as zoo director. And that guy was put in as a zoo director, Bob Yokel. Who knew nothing about zoos, had no experience with zoos, and had reputation for being a horrible person to get along with. Well,… Read More
Nobody had bothered to look into his credentials and it rearranged the staff a little bit. But I went in and talked to our parks department director and I said, look, this guy is really responsible for the whole screw up. Read More
Why is he still working here?… Read More
Oh, this is gonna cost so much more, where’s all this money going and all that. Well at that time Strawser and I breathe the sigh of relief ’cause it wasn’t our responsibility anymore (chuckles). It was his, and he’d been handling for the past couple years. Well, at that… Read More
And he came in and he hired a fellow who kind of a strange duck, in that he didn’t get along with anybody. But he put him in charge of the project. So he essentially took the design thing out of our hands out of Strawser’s hands and my hands,… Read More
And we took Fred with us up there, and were able to go through the haunted house, a lot of the attractions. And they showed us behind the scenes, how everything worked. I mean, it was quite a fantastic trip. We knew a guy that was one of the designers… Read More
Then of course, we got things well along. Well we had some problems with the architectural firm, engineering firm. Because they ran into over costs on overruns. And instead of… I think they had a $450,000 contract. It ran it up to around 600,000. Well, about that time, we got… Read More