The Louisville Zoo
Being the General Curator of a zoo
meant I was in charge of the entire animal collection. It was the ideal job for
an animal person, but it was not without its drawbacks. I enjoyed the
responsibility of buying and selling animals, except when the director
reprimanded me for buying at too high a price and selling too low. I was
responsible for the animal collection 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which
meant that when a night watchman called in sick, I was often the one who had to
pull an all-nighter.
The Louisville Zoo, in those
days, was a medium sized zoo with a significant collection of mammals
(elephants & rhinos, lions & tigers, seals & sea lions), but few
birds and reptiles. The zoo was only ten years old, so most of the animal
exhibits were modern and spacious.
Most of my time in Louisville is
not well documented. I was involved in Cub Scouts with my boys Mike and Jason;
my youngest son, Steve, was just beginning to walk; and my marriage was coming
to an end in 1982.
Also in 1982, I met the person
who would share the adventures of the rest of my life. One of my first dates
with Karen Liebert was to visit the Louisville Zoo and see our newest
acquisition, the two year old African elephant named Jana.
Jana the Elephant
Jana was the byproduct of
extensive culling operations in southern Africa and had most recently been
living with a bunch of other baby elephants at a holding compound in Ohio. She
would need to be trained for a life in captivity which, at the time, meant
“broken”, tamed for human contact, and taught various commands – not unlike
house-breaking a dog to live indoors. In order to accomplish this training, the
zoo hired legendary circus man and elephant trainer Robert “Smokey” Jones. At
the time, Smokey was in his mid-fifties – a gruff, no-nonsense, bear of a man.
He lived in a camper near our hay barn with Jana tied to a stake outside his
door. His methods of training were rough, but he did get results and, at the
time, I wouldn’t have known of any other way to do it. She was completely wild.
In the early days, he would place a rope around each leg and have four, sturdy
zookeepers hold onto each rope for dear life as she dragged them around. I
wasn’t there for most of the actual training, but I do know he was successful
because she eventually worked her way into our system. I also know that these
cruel methods are, thankfully, no longer condoned in the zoos of today. Jana
later went to live at the zoo in Knoxville, Tennessee and I moved to Tampa,
Florida to lead the efforts to renovate the aging zoo at Lowry Park.
The Lowry Park Zoo
Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo was a
fast-moving, high-profile project when I arrived in 1984 and one of the first
challenges found me, once again, in the elephant business. Sheena had been
donated to the zoo in 1961 by the Park’s namesake, General Sumter L. Lowry, Jr.
She had been just 18 months old when she arrived. The new master plan had been
designed around her and the building she inhabited, but in order to build her
new facilities, she would need to be moved to another zoo for a few years.
After searching far and wide, we
found a good facility at African Lion Safari near Toronto Canada that would
take her. They had proper facilities, other elephants, and a highly competent
staff. A deal was struck that would send her to Canada and bring her back when
her new home was completed. All we had to do was figure out how to get her
there. I described the process in my article for the Zoo’s newsletter in the
fall of 1985.
Though
highly trained, Sheena had not been handled in over ten years. She had become
quite unmanageable and even dangerous to those who worked around her. But after
a few days with the experienced elephant handler, Charles Gray, she was
performing all of her old tricks and even seemed to enjoy the change in routine
and the companionship of her handler. The next problem was how to get her out
of the enclosure. So complete was Sheena’s incarceration, that there was not
even a gate into her enclosure. Our friendly workmen moved in with their
cutting torches and bulldozers, and after nearly an hour of cutting the heavy
iron rails, an opening was made in the pen.
The
next problem we faced was the uncertainty of Sheena’s reactions to her new
found freedom. Would she respond to her handler’s commands, or would she run
away at the first opportunity? The moment of truth arrived. As Sheena walked
out of her pen for the first time in nearly 15 years, it became obvious that
she was happy to be outside and yet very responsive to her handler. She quickly gained his confidence, and was
soon allowed to wander happily around and explore the zoo she had lived in for
most of her life. The rest of her loading and transporting was so uneventful as
to appear routine. But that was not the end of the story.
In
order to make transportation less traumatic, another elephant was brought from
Canada to keep her company. A large male Asian elephant named “Buke” became the
first elephant ever to share Sheena’s enclosure. Though she was coy to his
advances at first and turned her back whenever he came close, she soon warmed
up and remained close by his side as they explored the zoo grounds.
The zoo, at that time, was being
demolished. Most of the cages and sidewalks were gone and the elephants had
plenty of sand to throw on themselves and few opportunities to get into any
trouble. Buke was an impressive beast with massive tusks. He seemed gentle
enough, responding to his handlers like an anxious child as the two elephants
wandered the property untethered. He was so gentle that I took a photo of my
twelve year old son, Jason, riding on his back. The next time I saw Buke was at
his home in Canada later that summer. He was in musth (a period when bull
elephants are sexually active and very aggressive) and chained to a tree –
ready to kill anyone who came too near.
Sheena did well in Canada and we
were hopeful later that summer when we were informed that breeding was taking
place. Our hopes were dashed, however, when we received word that she had died
of heart failure on January 17, 1986.
Bringing Down the Bars
I had been hired by the City of
Tampa Parks Department in the spring of 1984 for the newly created position of
Zoo Superintendent. A national humane society had dubbed Lowry Park one of the
worst zoos in America a few years earlier and Tampa residents had called for it
to be fixed up or shut down. The Lowry Park Zoo Association was formed in 1982,
at the suggestion of the Tampa Parks Department, to raise awareness of the zoo
and to promote a public-private partnership to fund its renaissance. After
having worked at modern zoos in Toronto and Louisville, the Lowry Park Zoo was
quite a let-down. Colleagues still tease me about my first office – a round,
blue building that had been a birthday party house and was decorated to look
like a birthday cake. There was promise of improvements, but that was small
consolation to the animals. The zoo architectural firm, Design Consortium,
Ltd., was also hired in 1984, to develop a 24-acre master plan.
Our first event was in August of
that year when we unveiled what was touted as a $10 million master plan that
would use water barriers and dry moats to create naturalistic habitats for the
animals while increasing the size of the zoo from 11 acres to 24 acres. The
City was committing $1 million to fund the initial site preparation and
infrastructure improvements as well as another $5 million for phase 1 of the
zoo development. With the City firmly committed, the Zoo Association embarked
on a $20 million capital campaign to build a new zoo for the City of Tampa.
Next Week: The Lowry Park Zoo is
transformed
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