I also remembered in Europe where they have very limited space. They have outdoor yards for primates and cats up on an upper level and the winter housing and night housing is down underneath because they don’t have space behind it. So we picked the space that the lion house… Read More
And the architect took that tablecloth, went back and made Big Cat Country. That’s what Big Cat Country is. Came from a drawing on a tablecloth, paper tablecloth. Now the River’s Edge required a lot of land. Read More
How did this unique idea come about?… Read More
Was that it, when you were building Big Cat Country?… Read More
Were you trying to answer critics or did you already have this in the mind of what you wanted to do?… Read More
When we went on a Zoo Museum District campaign going from a city zoo to a zoo district, we said that the lion house was falling apart. The concrete was cracked. The iron bars, we had a picture of iron bar rusting out at the bottom where there’s a space. Read More
But when he’s sittin’ there layin’ back, every scale mark was around his neck that he died from asphyxiation by the snake. The snake was it.” He asked me, “How big was that snake?” I said, “Well we haven’t measured it yet.” They brought the snake to the zoo, police… Read More
He wrote that when he visited the St. Louis Zoo as kid, he remembers and you probably do too that the big cats would pace back and forth. When you visit the big cats now at St. Louis, you’re not seeing them as easily because of the exhibitry, no pacing… Read More
What was your intent?… Read More
Was that the grizzly bear part saying that?… Read More
No, that was the teddy bear. You had a snake called the Big Sucker. Okay. We had an occasion in St. Louis where a man had a python. It was a Burmese python and it was about 12-feet long and he would take it out and handle it. (coughs) It… Read More
And the proof of it, I found out from the coroner. The coroner called me the next day and said, “We just want you to know that that man did die from asphyxiation by the snake. How common is that?” I said, “Well really unusual. The snake must’ve panicked or… Read More
But anyway, I called Jerry up to my office. And at that time, we always said, “Any act of careless, you’re fired.” And I called Jerry up. He thought she was gonna be fired. I said, “Jerry. You know, everybody’s entitled to one mistake. One mistake only and you’ve had… Read More
He thought he was gonna be fired. Read More
So we had to lock up the building. The pool led to a keeper passage. I mean a closed-in passage, so we thought it was confined there. But it also led to a similar passage under cages in the basement. We locked the building down. We even closed the zoo. Read More
I’ve forgotten how many days later. But we sprinkled talcum powder and diatomaceous earth on the floor, all hallway, keeper passages, everywhere in the whole building. And then we knew where every cockroach was in the building. The only place we saw tracks was in the holding crawlspace under the… Read More
We had flashlights and there was the spitting cobra. He was in the trap, but he turned around and went back out. But I had to grabber with me and I grabbed him and Ron had to run up and get a welding mask because these are spitting cobras. I… Read More
Would you say that certain skills of animal management and handling have been lost and is that a bad or good thing?… Read More
I think they’ve just changed because you’re managing animals in a more sophisticated way. In fact, there’s a whole new science called animal enrichment where the keepers are thinking of new ways to get the animals to behave in a natural way by hiding food in hollow trees and hollow… Read More
Can you tell us a story about the spitting cobra?… Read More