There wasn’t a park commission and I wouldn’t go to every city council meeting, but if there was a zoo item, I was there. And we had quite an issue with master planning and stuff. So I was there quite a bit. And, and so occasionally I had to talk… Read More
And I, oh, I thought that was kind of cool idea. That’s kind of forward thinking. And this one commissioner came in there and said, no, we’re not gonna do it. Read More
Let’s tear it down. I said, no, we can’t. What do you mean?… Read More
Well, we’ll build another one. So, and he was absolutely right. It would’ve been a disaster. And we built a new education center that was much nicer. So, you know, they made some decisions pretty much different than I would’ve made. But for the most part, they actually made the… Read More
So they would, they would go there. And as our sister zoo agreement with Wuhan China, the two of the commissioners came on that. So they were very involved and, and particularly with construction project, but obviously they set the fees. They had a re they set an agreement with… Read More
And what we were gonna do, and in the planning process, and I didn’t really have koalas in it because they’re expensive. I think it costs the zoo 30 or 40,000 a year for one koala get two shipments. One from Florida and one from Arizona of Eucalyptus to feed… Read More
So we, we added koalas at a late date in that, just because this one commissioner, who by the way had spent a couple of years in Australia, so he said, you can’t have an Australian exhibit without koalas. So we had koalas and we’ve had ’em ever since and… Read More
But I was always at every meeting. Fortunately I was a landlord for my boss, the park director. ’cause the parks office was in the zoo. It was the old zoo office. But they moved the zoo office in different place and used that for the parks office. So I… Read More
So all the, I think all the counties in Ohio have Metro park systems and they’re funded by property taxes. So we had three park commissioners appointed by the, they had to have something in every county. Flip a coin. The head probate judge in the county appoints the commissioners. Read More
What do you think is the most effective way to deal with elected officials and municipal bureaucrats in order to help develop and manage the zoo today?… Read More
Well, good communication. Let me, let me tell you a little bit about Cleveland Metro Park Zoo that is different than other zoos as the name applies Metro Parks. So in the turn of the century, Cleveland got to the state legislator and created a thing called that counties could… Read More
Cleveland you mentioned was municipal zoo. Read More
It looks just like a human female. He was expecting he’d see something a little different, but he said, no, it’s just, I knew exactly what I was looking at. So that’s a good thing zoos can do. I mean, most zoos have a dentist and a, you know, different… Read More
You know, we, Chris, we, we have good primatologists that were able to figure it out and get it done. And, and it’s just such a success story. I just can’t stop talking about it because it’s so amazing. The other cute thing that, that with gorillas, like all people,… Read More
They flew it up here to Cleveland and who took that baby?… Read More
But Freddy, they put it there. Freddy came and grabbed that baby. Now her other adopted baby Kabi was, was, you know, two and a half years old. So it was fine. And to now to see those baby gorillas in that exhibit and to tell people that story, most… Read More
So now we had a couple babies, you know, and that mother was actually taking care of the baby. Then Fort Worth Zoo had a baby and they tried, excuse me, they tried and tried, but they couldn’t get the mother to take it. Read More
Yes. Were they expensive? Probably yes. And that’s probably why they had to discontinue ’em. But again, you can do things that get people really interested. We, we’ve mentioned giraffe feeding and Laura Keaton parakeet feeding and stuff. So you can get people close to animals that way. I think… Read More
They still trained the gorilla, the, to Freddy to bring the baby over to the, to the mesh to give it a bottle. I mean, absolutely amazing. First they trained Freddy to hold the baby, although she had had babies before. So they trained Freddy to hold the baby and… Read More
So we’re, we’re all animal ambassadors. And with a lot of people out there talking to the animals, I think it adds a lot. And I have found that I spend more time in the zoo now with guests than I did as a director probably. And I found people… Read More