It was, somebody discovered it and it’s around. These basic principles, now, you can massage them and do a lot of things with them. They don’t change. As excitement increases, barriers weaken. That’s a tenant of one of the things that Heini Hediger talks about. What does that mean? If… Read More
When you build things, you have to be aware of the jumping of animals, of the burrowing of that, what are you dealing with?… Read More
These are just basic tenants. You gotta be a student of the game. If you said to somebody, “What’s the international zoo yearbook?” What is it? It’s been around for like 45 years and they have papers. Now, they’re now online. So you know, it goes with the new age. Read More
There’s a lot of stuff. So to me, these types of publications, the zoo publications are so important for people in the profession to be students of the game, understand the history of your profession, understand the tenants of your profession. And you become a much more valuable keeper, valuable… Read More
What are the building blocks of your profession?… Read More
What should you know? Basic stuff. It’s, I don’t wanna make a baseball analogy here, but the bottom line is you gotta know how to pitch. You got these fundamentals, the fundamentals of your business. And I found that a lot of people who are in the profession don’t know… Read More
When you’re a new animal keeper, that should be the, here’s this, read this. And I don’t find that people do. Heini Hediger who is called the father of zoo biology, that’s a pretty good title. It is a big title. Who wrote books, “Man and Animal in the Zoo,”… Read More
But all of a sudden, it was so powerful a lesson ’cause he discovered it. Sure. And that was important. And so that’s something he’s gonna do. The rest of his life. Absolutely. Well done. Well done. And he’s gonna teach that to somebody. “Yeah. That day I found the… Read More
So maybe this ties into, you often say that a professional zoo person needs to be a student of the game. What do you mean by that?… Read More
Okay. I’m gonna go on a soapbox here, but here’s the deal. Let her rip. When I say you gotta be a student of the game, I mean, you have to understand your profession. You have to have, ideally, you have to have a deeper understanding of your profession. Read More
What has been written about things?… Read More
Oh. And then I’m thinking, “What’s the deal?… Read More
Why am I finding this?” Right? Again, I am finding this. The keeper should have looked. And they knew to check, it’s all right. So we had a new keeper there, had not a lot of experience. So I said, “What can I do? I can go out there and… Read More
So I say to the new keep, I said, “Joe, have you checked the animals in the back end?” “Oh no, I was gonna do that.” I said, “Yeah, let’s go. What do we got there?… Read More
I haven’t had on opportunity.” I knew exactly what was going on. So he goes, “Oh, nothing.” “Yeah, let’s check the tab. Is anybody there?” “No, no everything. Oh, they look good, they look good.” And then he gets to the one. He opens it up and he goes, “Oh… Read More
And I just had a dwarf hamsters. What’s going on?… Read More
So I opened one of the tops and there is a mother and her babies. Read More
You had to be inventive?… Read More
Well, you had to be able to explain to people. We had a person who let, because of not locking a lock, a very forgetful thing that happens in a lot of zoos, you know, “I’m gonna lock the lock and hey, I got a phone call,” and you forget,… Read More
I see. And sometimes, for learning experiences, you have to pick your learning opportunities. And a good example is you’re checking your animals in the morning. So I go into the small mammal house. We had these animals called dwarf hamsters, Phodopus roborovskii. And we got them from the London… Read More