park." They said, "In addition to being a marvelous teaching tool, it will be a nice
 things for the community; [people could] bring kids out, etc."

 I said, "Well, you know, that is money we do not have, really." So I went to the city
 and to the county and said, "Look, here is what we want to do. If you, city, will give
 us $20,000, if you, county, will give us $20,000, we will put in $20,000, and with that
 $60,000 we will build this little zoological and botanical park for teaching purposes,
 but we will also have it open for kids to come and classes from the public school
 system."

 Well, the city said, "Fine." The county said, "We cannot give you cash, but we will
 give you [that much value] in kind." We said, "That is marvelous, we do not care
 [whether it is cash or in kind]." So they came out and did the fencing work and all
 that sort of stuff. And that is the story of the zoo. And the zoo, as you know, has
 been a marvelous success.

P: Has it grown?

R: It has grown only to the point that we finally have all the kids we can handle in
 there, because they get jobs like crazy. Before I left, Sam, the New York Zoological
 Gardens, the famous New York Zoo, which I guess is the biggest in the world, heard
 about the program and they came down to see us. They liked what we were doing
 so much that that year they took the entire senior class to New York and offered
 them all jobs. Now, of course, here we have kids from Lake City and Live Oak, and
 a lot of them did not want to [go work in New York].

P: Now, these kids actually learn how to take care of these animals, these creatures?

R: They do not become veterinarians, you know, but they do understand about animals.
 We have a pretty good collection out there, and the kids are well trained.

P: What do you have besides snakes?

R: We have monkeys, we have a couple of small ocelots, we have all kinds of birds; we
 have a pretty good collection.

P: Is it available for the parents or teachers in the community to just drive up and take
 their kids through?

R: Well, it was that way until we had a very strange thing happen.

P: I knew you had a zoo, but I never knew it was open to the public.

R: Well, if you would have had grandchildren in this town, you would have known,
 because they would have known from their friends. But we get school kids, busloads
 of first, second, third, fourth, fifth graders, coming out there, and [they] take guided


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