And I just happened to be coming around the corner in a golf cart. And she saw me and I hollered her there and said, “Rusty, what are you doing?” And she screamed and gave the big smile like they do and came running over and she took my arm… Read More
I was a friend who brought her apples. And so, yeah, I’ve had some personal things. Another time and zoo guys are always talking about animals that get out. Our big male gorilla Lamida we had on an island exhibit, which I was totally against. When you ask about Warren… Read More
So food didn’t work too much on her. So she ran outside and there was a police unit there and she walked right over and climbed in the cop car and sat down in the passenger side and the policeman on the other side immediately vacated. And he didn’t want… Read More
And so he sat down on the floor and handed her a bottle of strawberry ripple. And so she’d drink some and then he’d pretend to drink some. And so he got about a half a bottle of wine into her and she got a little more mellow then. And… Read More
She was a female chimp and probably the single most agile chimpanzee that I’ve worked with. She escaped on two different occasions from the chimpanzee exhibit. And in one instance got out into the outside of the zoo, into the surrounding area. And she went into a supermarket and was… Read More
Were there animals at the zoo that you were intimately involved with and why?… Read More
I’ve always been partial to the great apes since that’s where I started in a zoo. And we had two gorillas in Brownsville that were the original ones that came down. They were imported as five year old animals, more or less. And they went to the Omaha Zoo originally… Read More
Oh, yes. And we made rounds. The curators made rounds every morning. Now they would have keeper meetings, keepers would come in and report any abnormalities in their area. Then they’d usually report it to the veterinarian. And then the veterinarian would go with the curator together to the various… Read More
Obviously it was fatal to primates, which was one of the things that we had to be so careful about because you have keepers around, you have helpers around when you’re immobilizing animals. And if they would get in contact with one of these drugs, either while loading a syringe… Read More
Now as an associate director and as a director, did you make rounds of the zoo?… Read More
When I was in veterinary school, the two drugs were nicotine sulfate, which was a paralytic agent and very, very sensitive as far as the dosage. And you could give a certain amount and nothing would be apparent, and you’d give another 25% over that and the animal die. So… Read More
What was the state of the tranquilizer drugs now that you mentioned it when you were doing things in Africa or at the zoo at the time you were at starting at Brownsville?… Read More
Yes, Dr. Clinton gray at the National Zoo, Dr. Jack brunette from Dallas, Fred Soyfer from Houston. These were all some of the early leaders, Paul Chaffey from Fresno Zoo. And if I had a problem or a question, I could pick up the phone and call one of them… Read More
I laughed. I said, well, join the club. I did the same thing in Columbus and had to immediately give the reversal agent and put ’em on oxygen to revive ’em because it doesn’t work. So we had fun instances like that, where things didn’t turn out to be too… Read More
And so he had a grant that he could do this with. And they started publishing these tables, which gave the zoo vets sort of a guideline to go by whenever they would get a sick animal, they could check it, then they could check it to compare it to… Read More
Did you have any mentors within that veterinary group?… Read More
It was not so much an association thing at that time. As the Zoo Veterinarian Association grew to the point where I think it’s over six or 700 now active veterinarians around not just the US, but mostly North American, but also European, communication became better. And we had more… Read More
In the beginning, it was a pretty loose connection between zoo veterinarians around the country. As I say, the Zoo Veterinarian Association didn’t start until about the late ’60s. And it was a loose group of people who started meeting at Michigan State University back in ’67, ’68. And at… Read More
Did you call each other to consult?… Read More
How did that work?… Read More