I mean, we had a bird house, we had a reptile house, but the rest was mammals. Yeah. So my responsibility became multiplied. I was still looking at personnel, animal collections, the nursery, I mean, animal transport. I mean, I wasn’t doing in a vacuum, but it was part of,… Read More
Writing permits. Read More
How do you make the move from associate curator to curator?… Read More
Yeah. The position was zoologist then they changed the title to associate curator. It was the same essentially, but again. Responsibilities are different. Correct. But again, there’s a change in the upper echelon of the zoo. Saul Kitchener leaves to become director of the San Francisco Zoo. Dennis Merritt moves… Read More
That then my ex, my thing was not just a couple of these buildings, but it was all the mammals’ sections in the zoo, which was the major portion. Read More
Relationships are so important within the zoo and aquarium profession to getting things done and assisting and helping one another. And I had the opportunity to get a Smithsonian grant to travel and study at European zoos. So I went to Switzerland, England, John Aspinall’s place, Germany. Read More
How did you target these specific zoos?… Read More
They were world famous. I mean, Howletts because of the gorillas and we had gorillas. The Frankfurt Zoo, the Cologne Zoo, the Zurich Zoo, these were world famous institutions. And I figured I have the opportunity. So I put together a report, ton of information. But again, that exposure to… Read More
Absolutely. The better informed you are. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you and it’s a major initiative getting this Smithsonian grant and then taking this initiative and then actually producing a report from it. Yeah. I was very fortunate to be able to have the opportunity and I always tried to,… Read More
Happy ending, thankfully. Big, big deal. But again, it’s always making sure any enclosure has the right security because you never know who’s gonna come into the zoo and what you know might happen. Sure, sure. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. So you’ve talked about international involvement a few times here and… Read More
How this come about and why did you consider it so important to see collections both national and international?… Read More
Well, I think the lesson to me is that it’s so, you can’t be insular. You can’t just be at your place and think that what you’re doing is the last thing. The more breath and experience you have and seeing what the rest of of your profession is doing… Read More
Somebody approached, these kids approached, and all of a sudden, they’re, “Well, what’s going on here?… Read More
Maybe we got more than we could handle.” And they approached somebody, said, “You wanna buy these?” And they approached the police and they raided the house and grabbed our kids, so to speak. And they brought them back to the zoo. Read More
So happy ending?… Read More
I think that kind of the lesson is that to me, is that you always have to be aware of the security of your exhibits and you can never assume that everything is gonna be okay. And some kids came to the zoo. They saw, we had snow leopards that… Read More
We didn’t have a lock on the cage and they opened it up and they put a baby snow leopard in a bag, pillowcase, and they took it out and then they went home and they said, “Wait, we wanna get that gorilla baby. That seems cute.” And they came… Read More
All the police, everybody was there, “Who did it?” Whatever. And like most cases, it’s broken by an informant, not that we were that smart to do detective work. Read More
Where did we go?… Read More
Well, she was okay with it because she kind of abandoned the kid. All of a sudden, she stopped nursing it. So we had to take over and that’s when we leaned on our medical committee with the pediatricians and so forth. And before the birth, Dr. Bailey was able… Read More