In the
spring of 1970, I underwent a transformation. I was attending Mercer University in
Macon, Georgia, fortunate to be completing my junior year on a basketball
scholarship and, though I was studying Biology, I had no idea what I wanted to
pursue upon graduation.
One of
our regular activities every spring was to make the two hour drive north to
Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium for an Atlanta Braves baseball game. The trips
to Atlanta usually came with some time to kill. We often found ourselves at the
shops and nightclubs of Underground Atlanta but on this trip, for some reason,
we ended up at the Atlanta Zoo. This was a life-changing experience for me. I had
never been to a zoo and I was well and truly hooked by the experience. Their
famous gorilla, Willie B, was nine years old. The World of Reptiles building
was state-of-the-art and would stand until it was replaced 44 years later. I
saw elephants, big cats, apes, and bears. I was amazed at the varieties of
birds and reptiles. And it occurred to me that this was a place I would like to
work. This would be my career.
That
summer, I gave up my scholarship and transferred to the University of South
Florida in Tampa, where I eventually earned my degree in zoology. I held a
series of menial, part-time positions at Busch
Gardens that included gardener and monorail driver, before
I landed that coveted position in the zoo department. It was a job
that elicited passion, compassion, and a good measure of excitement and danger.
I did not realize it at the time, but I was fortunate to receive my early
training at one of the best zoos in the world – a zoo that, in fact, was far
ahead of its time. Busch Gardens opened in late 1950’s as a beer-tasting area
and tropical bird garden adjacent to the brewery. In the mid-1960’s, the
attraction opened a large expanse of sandy, open pasture that resembled the
Serengeti Plains of Africa. It was, as I recall, a hundred-or-so acres of
hoofed animal pastures divided by long, meandering waterways. The larger,
dangerous animals were contained behind deep, hidden dry-moats. Most of it was
only accessible to visitors by monorail.
My first job at the Gardens was
hosing debris and duck poop off of what seemed like miles of sidewalks that
meandered through the gardens. After a summer driving the monorail, I
eventually worked my way into the zoo department. Here is how I described my
job in a March 1973 letter of application for a position at the Metro Toronto
Zoo:
For
the last 16 months I have worked the 4:00 – midnight shift in order that I might
pursue my studies in the daytime. The first part of my night is involved in
feeding and returning all display animals to their nighttime quarters. My
partner and I are responsible for lions, leopards, cheetahs, river and pigmy
hippos, black and white rhinos, cape buffaloes, baboons, gorillas, chimpanzees,
gibbons, and okapi. Myself and two other men are responsible for walking the
large male and 4 female African elephants to their nighttime quarters. The
remainder of my evening is spent alone, patrolling pastures and inspecting
herds of giraffe, zebra, antelope, and gazelles. Often my responsibilities
include assisting in difficult births, bottle-feeding babies who can’t nurse,
assisting the zoo veterinarian, and effecting emergency repairs on equipment
whenever necessary.
Fearsome Creatures
It was great training because,
while keepers at most zoos would have a defined area of responsibility, I had
an opportunity to work with nearly every animal in the collection. And some of
them were quite memorable, even more than forty years later.
Chimp Island, for example, was
intimidating to a young zookeeper because our access was by boat and we were
trapped on an island with one of the most fearsome animals in the park – the
male chimp named Bamboo. The boat was a flat-bottomed, aluminum john-boat which
was fastened to a rope that stretched from shore to shore. We pulled ourselves
over to a cave-like opening in the rockwork that was protected from the chimps
by an elaborate array of electrified wires. Once inside the holding area,
Bamboo greeted us every day with his threat display of foot stomping, hooting
and screaming, culminating in a shower of poop that he scooped up from the
floor in a smooth underhand motion that peppered us with deadly accuracy. The experienced hands knew to duck out of the
doorway at the right moment, a technique that they failed to mention to the new
guy. What made Bamboo even more frightening was his reputation. A few years
earlier, a zookeeper had his calf muscle bitten off when Bamboo had crossed the
hot wire surrounding the entrance and entered the night house behind him.
We had other fearsome animals,
like the male Cape buffalo who, after I let him out of his night house one
morning and closed the massive, steel sliding door, turned around and hit the
door with such force that he sent it swinging up on its overhead track. The
bottom track, which had been anchored into the concrete, came flying into the
middle of the room.
A more subtle, but no less deadly
creature was the quiet female African leopard, who would remain timidly
snarling at the back of her night quarters every evening when I shoved her meat
under the bars of her cage. One evening I dropped the empty meat bag in the
gutter that ran along the front of her cage. When I casually reached down to
retrieve it, she bolted from the back of the cage in the blink of an eye and
hooked my hand with her claws. Fortunately for me, she only got me with one
claw which dug into the fleshy part of my left hand leaving a scar that reminds
me of that close call to this day.
An Emotional Commitment to Zoos
In the fall of 1971, Busch
Gardens Tampa won the prestigious Edward H. Bean Award in the mammal category
for the first captive breeding of the roan antelope. The Bean Award was presented
by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (currently known
as the Association of Zoos and Aquariums –
AZA)
in recognition of a significant captive propagation effort that clearly
enhanced the conservation of the species. The roan is a medium-sized,
African antelope that stands about five feet at the shoulder and weighs in at
five or six hundred pounds. It is light brown all over with the most
distinctive markings being the black mask that covers most of the face. Ears
are long and pointed, and horns are short, stout, and swept-back in a gentle
backward arch. I was proud of the award, even though I had only worked at the
Gardens for less than a month. I loved hoofed stock and this award, according
to the criteria, was supposed to “demonstrate an exceptional institutional
commitment”. So imagine my disappointment when it was announced the very next
year that a new attraction was to swallow-up the roan antelope breeding pen. The section of the
park known as "Stanleyville" opened in 1973 and was home to the
park's first water ride, the Stanley Falls Flume. Animals, it appeared, would
need to take a backseat to rides and other attractions as Busch Gardens faced
some stiff competition up Interstate-4 in Orlando where Walt Disney was opening
his new Magic Kingdom. As an aspiring young zookeeper, it was time
for me to move on.
“The emotional commitment to
zoos,” George Leposky wrote in his 1972 article, “which motivates Porter’s
strivings is widespread among devotees of zoos – employees and visitors alike.
It complicates immeasurably the debate over zoos’ continued existence, for the
old cliché about love being blind applies. The blind sport which Porter shares
with most supporters of zoos is an unwillingness to admit that the reasons he
gives in defense of their survival are less a description of reality than a
vision of what zoos could and should become.”
A Chimp Named Herman
Nowhere is this vision better
illustrated than with the other individual in that long-ago article, a
youngster named Herman. He was just a little guy in 1972 – about six years old
– and he did not deserve to be behind bars. A photo of him in the St. Petersburg
Times magazine evokes a sense of tragedy even though he appears relaxed with
one foot propped up on the bars as he picks intently at a piece of fruit. He
had only been in these cramped, dank quarters for about a year, but the real
tragedy was that he would live there for another twelve years before our paths
would cross again and I would be privileged to do something about his
condition. Herman was a Chimpanzee who lived across town from Busch Gardens in
what Leposky described as the “dilapidated, prison-like cages” at Tampa’s
public zoo at Lowry Park. A decade later, I was destined to return to Tampa to
direct the renaissance of the Lowry Park Zoo and see Herman
walk on grass for the first time.
Looking back from the perspective
of today, it is difficult to imagine a society that would accept the keeping of
animals in such conditions. But that was a different era – an era that
stretched back hundreds of years to the very first menageries in the Western
world.
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