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THREE QUARTERS OF A CENTURY OF WILD TALES - Patricia Yollin, SF Chronicle, July 29, 2004
"If anyone tells me one more fact, my head's going to explode," penguin keeper Jane Tollini said Wednesday before conducting a history tour of the San Francisco Zoo for its 75th anniversary. Her skull remained intact, though it's not clear how, considering how full it already was.
She talked about past polar bear cubs named Huey, Dewey and Louie, and black rhinos answering to Gemstone, Rhinestone and Moonstone. She recalled how castrated male lions turned into "little sissy Marys" until vasectomies came along. And she re-created an age when moose would wander onto Sloat Boulevard and an orangutan named Mickey would wash zoo elephants with a scrub brush.
When the San Francisco Zoo opened in 1929, nobody talked about animal enrichment, field conservation or visitor education. Instead, the place resembled a cross between a circus and a carnival -- much like its counterparts elsewhere, started mostly by big-game hunters who wanted to show off the animals they hadn't shot. "The mentality back then was, 'Just see 'em, feed 'em and clean 'em,' " Tollini told zoo employees and media on a motorized open-air tram making its maiden voyage.
Over the last few months, she interviewed old keepers, plumbed newspaper archives and visited the city library to piece together a history of the zoo - - which will exhibit historic photographs, memorabilia and a commemorative quilt in the Mother's Building for all of August to mark its anniversary. The Mother's Building itself -- an Italian Renaissance jewel that was built by zoo founder Herbert Fleishhacker and his brother to honor their mother -- was part of Tollini's tour.
Women created the Works Progress Administration murals inside, the tiled mosaics outside and the sculptures of males and females on concrete vases at the entrance, she said. "The women are draped, but the men's peas and carrots are hanging out," Tollini noted.
. . .
In the old days, there were no vets at the zoo, and keepers were given keys to the exhibits and a rake. Security has not always been ideal.
One day in the 1970s, a chimp called Tallulah escaped to the zoo's snack bar, where she gorged herself until an employee with a gun appeared. "She grabbed the gun and pointed it at him," Tollini said. Eventually, the chimp's keeper arrived to stage a rescue. The ape got loose on another occasion and checked out a pay phone's coin return, as she'd seen countless visitors do.
On an evening in 1987, a homeless drunk named Skippy, who lived on the Great Highway, stole penguin No. 102. Skippy was grabbed by the police along Ocean Beach and was on the verge of being handcuffed when they had to pursue an ax murderer in the Richmond District. The drunk got away, while the penguin cooled its heels for hours in the back of the squad car.
A few weeks later, another purloined penguin surfaced at the firehouse in Haight-Ashbury. To honor Skippy, Tollini said, the nameless penguins were dubbed Ripple and Thunderbird.
The inspiration for the San Francisco Zoo, Tollini said, was a grizzly called Monarch, donated to the city by San Francisco Examiner publisher William Randolph Hearst. In 1889, when the bear first hit town, 20,000 people welcomed him at the train depot on Townsend Street.
Decades later, queues formed at the zoo for other reasons. A Nile hippopotamus named Puddles would spin his tail to scatter his excrement. "People would line up to see Puddles take a dump," Tollini said. (Note: He's the one Maths wrote about.)
There was also Gertrude, a Himalayan bear who went on bombing missions during World War II until she got too big for the cockpit and started pushing buttons she shouldn't have. hen she moved to the zoo, Gertrude was a favorite of servicemen, who liked to drink beer with her.
. . .
The old part of the zoo is full of concrete buildings -- not well suited to animals, but still useful in some cases.
"If there's a major earthquake, you'd be so safe in the elephant house," Tollini said. "But the elephants would kill you."
Wearing a turquoise penguin sweatshirt, turquoise fish earrings and turquoise socks, Tollini sometimes referred to colored index cards. Although she pioneered a Valentine's Day sex tour of animal mating habits that is copied by zoos around the country, she hadn't done a history tour since the late 1980s -- when it took the form of a "cocktail walkabout" with an hors d'oeuvre tray in its wake.
"I never use notes for the sex tours," Tollini said. "But that comes a lot more naturally than this."
"If anyone tells me one more fact, my head's going to explode," penguin keeper Jane Tollini said Wednesday before conducting a history tour of the San Francisco Zoo for its 75th anniversary. Her skull remained intact, though it's not clear how, considering how full it already was.
She talked about past polar bear cubs named Huey, Dewey and Louie, and black rhinos answering to Gemstone, Rhinestone and Moonstone. She recalled how castrated male lions turned into "little sissy Marys" until vasectomies came along. And she re-created an age when moose would wander onto Sloat Boulevard and an orangutan named Mickey would wash zoo elephants with a scrub brush.
When the San Francisco Zoo opened in 1929, nobody talked about animal enrichment, field conservation or visitor education. Instead, the place resembled a cross between a circus and a carnival -- much like its counterparts elsewhere, started mostly by big-game hunters who wanted to show off the animals they hadn't shot. "The mentality back then was, 'Just see 'em, feed 'em and clean 'em,' " Tollini told zoo employees and media on a motorized open-air tram making its maiden voyage.
Over the last few months, she interviewed old keepers, plumbed newspaper archives and visited the city library to piece together a history of the zoo - - which will exhibit historic photographs, memorabilia and a commemorative quilt in the Mother's Building for all of August to mark its anniversary. The Mother's Building itself -- an Italian Renaissance jewel that was built by zoo founder Herbert Fleishhacker and his brother to honor their mother -- was part of Tollini's tour.
Women created the Works Progress Administration murals inside, the tiled mosaics outside and the sculptures of males and females on concrete vases at the entrance, she said. "The women are draped, but the men's peas and carrots are hanging out," Tollini noted.
. . .
In the old days, there were no vets at the zoo, and keepers were given keys to the exhibits and a rake. Security has not always been ideal.
One day in the 1970s, a chimp called Tallulah escaped to the zoo's snack bar, where she gorged herself until an employee with a gun appeared. "She grabbed the gun and pointed it at him," Tollini said. Eventually, the chimp's keeper arrived to stage a rescue. The ape got loose on another occasion and checked out a pay phone's coin return, as she'd seen countless visitors do.
On an evening in 1987, a homeless drunk named Skippy, who lived on the Great Highway, stole penguin No. 102. Skippy was grabbed by the police along Ocean Beach and was on the verge of being handcuffed when they had to pursue an ax murderer in the Richmond District. The drunk got away, while the penguin cooled its heels for hours in the back of the squad car.
A few weeks later, another purloined penguin surfaced at the firehouse in Haight-Ashbury. To honor Skippy, Tollini said, the nameless penguins were dubbed Ripple and Thunderbird.
The inspiration for the San Francisco Zoo, Tollini said, was a grizzly called Monarch, donated to the city by San Francisco Examiner publisher William Randolph Hearst. In 1889, when the bear first hit town, 20,000 people welcomed him at the train depot on Townsend Street.
Decades later, queues formed at the zoo for other reasons. A Nile hippopotamus named Puddles would spin his tail to scatter his excrement. "People would line up to see Puddles take a dump," Tollini said. (Note: He's the one Maths wrote about.)
There was also Gertrude, a Himalayan bear who went on bombing missions during World War II until she got too big for the cockpit and started pushing buttons she shouldn't have. hen she moved to the zoo, Gertrude was a favorite of servicemen, who liked to drink beer with her.
. . .
The old part of the zoo is full of concrete buildings -- not well suited to animals, but still useful in some cases.
"If there's a major earthquake, you'd be so safe in the elephant house," Tollini said. "But the elephants would kill you."
Wearing a turquoise penguin sweatshirt, turquoise fish earrings and turquoise socks, Tollini sometimes referred to colored index cards. Although she pioneered a Valentine's Day sex tour of animal mating habits that is copied by zoos around the country, she hadn't done a history tour since the late 1980s -- when it took the form of a "cocktail walkabout" with an hors d'oeuvre tray in its wake.
"I never use notes for the sex tours," Tollini said. "But that comes a lot more naturally than this."
