Interview 14294 – Caption Index: 143
You mentioned the elephant house that you put together. 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
What was- What would you say was the favorite part of your job being director?… Read More
The favorite part of my job as director, I guess over the years was the planning and developing a new zoo. One that had natural habitat. It was a long process, a very frustrating process. And eventually I think that the product, the new zoo was a very nice thing,… Read More
And as our collection grew and we got more big apes, gorillas for instance. At the new zoo, we would anesthetize them once a year to give them a physical exam. And we always had a team of doctors there do the exam. EKG and examine them from head to… Read More
We did if we had a primate, and then we were also called upon ones too, with a kidney transplant. One of the first kidney transplants that was done, they used two baboons to transplant the kidneys into young a boy. And I was responsible for anesthetizing the baboons, and… Read More
Did you ever consider, or did you ever use regular medical doctors or hospitals to help you?… Read More
We got them separated. But those were the days where the old cage type exhibits and the totally unsatisfactory way of keeping animals. The only thing I’d say about those days, is they got people interested in animals. And if you’re gonna get people interested in conserving animals, you gotta… Read More