I wouldn’t say there were any major hurdles in getting the zoo opened. The major hurdle of course, was trying to get a new zoo built. And that was an interesting proposition. That is a lot complicated experience. Playing the political game again, we knew that we should get the… Read More
It probably took us two weeks to reopen the zoo again. And then of course all exhibits weren’t there, but there’s construction out there, was basically chain link fences, concrete buildings with outside exhibits so that water didn’t hurt them at all. Few trees fell down, maybe tore down a… Read More
Was there any major hurdles in doing this?… Read More
We didn’t notice any behavioral differences with the animals after the hurricane. No. Things went pretty well back to normal again. Read More
How long did it take to reopen the zoo after this devastation?… Read More
Did you notice any behavioral differences with the animals after the hurricane?… Read More
Were the animal dealers helpful?… Read More
Were you looking to replenish your specimens. The animal dealers after the hurricane, I wouldn’t say that they donated animals to us or anything like that. They helped us in securing what animals we needed, but mainly again, they were reptiles, ’cause the male did pretty well. There was a… Read More
After the Hurricane Betsy problem, we knew we had to refurbish the zoo as best we could without getting into a lot of big expense. And we knew we had to build a new zoo. One thing the county did was they instituted an admission charge to the zoo, to… Read More
How do those things start to evolve?… Read More
That are that dangerous. And did other zoos… You lost a number of animals. We lost a lot of animals during that hurricane and the other zoos, some of them offered to keep some of the animals. And it seems like we did ship some of them out to other… Read More
So in the aftermath, you lost animals. Were your thoughts, let’s build a new zoo. Were your thoughts we need to replace the zoo, was the city government coming to your assistance to say, okay, we have to rebuild and we’ll do it right here. Read More
The only adjustments we made to that plan after the Hurricane Betsy was we didn’t put the reptiles on the floor anymore. We put them up in the exhibits. We bagged them all. We only had a few poisonous snakes ’cause I really didn’t like keeping poisonous snakes. We just… Read More
And afterward, were there adjustments to the plan, as you looked at the devastation and what had occurred?… Read More
Did you have a hurricane plan before this occurred or emergency plan for fire and different things and were hurricanes part of it?… Read More
Yes. We had an emergency plan for… We really wouldn’t have any fires out there. Everything was kind of isolated. But for hurricanes, yes. We had a plan. We went through who did what when, and where we went, and we listened to the different hurricane alerts. So we could… Read More
But mainly they were small and mainly reptiles. And then we had to regroup and get everything cleaned up. And that was really what started us seriously thinking about building a new zoo away from the ocean. Read More
So my wife got the kids together and the dog, and she went into town and got a motel room. And then the thing curved north. So she packed up the kids, went back home again, and that afternoon, the thing turned around and came back south. So it came… Read More
But then the next day they came and got us. Now that storm also broke loose, a barge that broke one of the bridges out at Key Biscayne so we couldn’t get home. Couldn’t get to the zoo. The army corps engineers came in and built a temporary bridge, a… Read More
1965, that was an interesting experience because I had a gallbladder attack in the summer of 1965 in fact two of them. And I went to see my physician and he said that… They did some tests and he said, “You’ve got gall bladder disease “and you’re gonna have to… Read More