February 6, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode of Wild Tails, host Mike Bona welcomes Gary Wilson, former instructor and director of the Teaching Zoo at Moorpark College. With decades of experience working with exotic animals, Gary shares an intense and dangerous encounter with a mountain lion at the zoo—one that highlights the unpredictability and power of wild animals, even in managed care.
Beyond thrilling wildlife stories, Gary and Mike dive into their shared passion for observing animals in their natural habitats, discussing the importance of patience, respect, and conservation in truly understanding wildlife. From close calls to peaceful moments in nature, this episode is packed with insights and excitement for animal lovers of all kinds!
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Learn More about America's Teaching Zoo at www.https://www.moorparkcollege.edu/current-students/teaching-zoo/home
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:19):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hello and welcome into Wild Tales.
I'm your host Mike Bona and thanks to If Mars Had Waves for my intro music.
I don't think I've talked about that before.
I know I've made a social media post, but on the podcast I want to thank
the band If Mars Has Waves.
They're a band from up in Northern California.
You can find their music on Bandcamp.
(00:39):
It's a great little surf rock band with a song called Move In Day.
How did I end up with this song and this band as my theme music?
Well, it helps if your brother is the bassist for the band.
Hey, Bob!
So anyway, thanks for tuning in again or if it's your first time, thanks for
checking me out.
I hope you enjoy.
I'm really excited about my guest today.
(01:00):
His name is Gary Wilson.
He is a former instructor and director and student of the teaching zoo at
Moorpark College.
He is currently retired.
A lifetime working with animals, so he has a lot of great stories to tell.
So it was a real pleasure to talk to him.
Twice we'll get into that in the interview, but we had some recording issues at
(01:21):
the beginning, so he was nice enough to hop on again to re-record.
It's the trials and errors of learning how to do a podcast.
So without further ado, let's get into it.
Here's Gary Wilson.
All right, well, let's get into it.
So Gary Wilson, you are the former instructor at Moorpark College, America's
(01:47):
teaching zoo.
That's right.
It's got a new name now.
I don't remember off the top of my head.
It's the teaching zoo at Moorpark College.
Okay, so just a slight change.
Yeah, slight change.
It's still part of Moorpark College.
Way back when it was my idea, the name of America's teaching zoo, because I
(02:09):
thought it was appropriate that it established our preeminence in the field.
I mean, that was back before social engineering stuff, but it did come up early
in browsers, I think in searches, search history in America's teaching zoo.
But most of the people in the community just calls it the zoo at Moorpark
(02:32):
College.
That's right.
And you taught training?
And yeah, that's right.
Animal training, animal behavior, animal diversity.
And two aspects you really have to teach when teaching someone training that a
trainer has to learn is patience and consistency.
And if you can learn that, it can apply through many factors in one's life,
(02:55):
including podcasting.
Because I'm just going to go out and say this for everyone listening.
This is the second time today we're recording this because you learn through
trial and error.
This is a fairly new podcast.
And the first time we went through this, we didn't record.
It didn't record.
It's out in the ether.
(03:15):
We had a nice, pleasant chat that no one will ever hear.
Well, you can blame it on me.
Hey, it was the new guy using that software.
He screwed it up.
It's the old guy trying to use technology.
Look, it could very well have been as much my fault, but we'll just look past
it.
But I do want to talk about my earliest memory of you.
(03:37):
What was that?
Well, you used to be the director at America's Teaching Zoom.
I was a student, and my first day as a student was August 1999.
And me and 50 other aspiring, very eager students walked in and sat down in the
(03:58):
amphitheater to be greeted with what was going to be our next two years ahead
of us.
It was us.
It was roughly 50 or so second year students.
You were supposed to come out to welcome us and introduce us to the teaching
zoo and our future.
But you weren't there, Gary.
You weren't there.
You had other plans that day.
(04:19):
You were at the emergency room.
You had the emergency room because, well, I'll let you, why were you in the
emergency room?
It wasn't, it wasn't by choice, really.
It rarely is.
Yeah, yeah.
I had, so this was the first day of Orientation Week, and which at Moore Park,
(04:40):
at the Edom program, we started a week before the rest of the college started,
because we needed that time to get the new students up and going before classes
started.
And that morning, I had come in for the morning area before all you fresh-faced
first years arrived.
(05:02):
And I had just come back from a couple weeks on vacation.
And so I was, that morning, my responsibility was to oversee cleaning in the
carnivore area.
And we had a mountain lion named Kisu, a cougar, that had, was a former pet.
(05:25):
He, a guy had gone to Texas and bought this cougar, as a young cougar, in
a hotel in Texas.
Well, where else are you going to get a mountain lion?
It's a Texas hotel.
That's where you get them.
Everyone knows that's where they come from.
I imagine there's a YouTube instructional video on how to do that.
And, well, he brought it back to California.
(05:47):
He had it de-clawed on all four feet, which is pretty extreme.
And the cat, as a result, the cat limped somewhat.
That, in later years, I think that he had some pain in his feet and that
caused him to be kind of grumpy.
And that may have led to the situation I ran into, but not sure.
(06:09):
Anyway, he and I were buddies.
I hung out with him.
I'd go into his enclosure and sit with him and he'd fall asleep with me in
there.
I'd take him for walks.
You know, one of your other guests, Mara Rodriguez, she would take him out for
walks.
He was, you know, he was a pretty good cat.
And we had, of course, we had gotten him from California Fish and Game and we'd
confiscated him from the guy who had brought him into the state illegally.
(06:34):
So anyway, during, while I was gone on vacation, the cat had been moved from
one corner of the Karnes area to the other corner.
And so a different enclosure on the other end of the complex.
And I don't even remember why we did that.
(06:56):
But I had, in the past, in doing the cleaning, we
would shift the animal from their home enclosure into our training arena.
And that way the students could go in and clean the animal's enclosure
(07:18):
thoroughly without having to worry about the animal, of course.
And so it was a, you know, safe way to do it.
Well, this cat, because he was very handleable and like I said, we were
buddies, I had gotten in the routine because he sometimes didn't go right away
into the arena.
So I'd gotten into the habit of going into the corridor, the corridor that
(07:42):
connected his home enclosure with the arena.
I'd go in there and I would kind of encourage him to go into the arena.
So I went into the corridor this morning, planning to do the same thing.
And I stationed myself down near the door to the arena and told the students to
(08:03):
let him into the corridor.
So they opened the door of his enclosure and he came into the corridor and he
trotted right down to me and looked in the arena, pretty much ignored me, just
looked in the arena and then trotted back toward his enclosure.
The students had closed his door so he couldn't go back into his enclosure, but
(08:28):
he stopped at that end and was looking in the nearby enclosure where Bobcat
lived.
And so I called to him, you know, trying to get him to come back to
me.
I found that, you know, you have a, you know, you develop special techniques
(08:49):
with the animals you work with.
And I had this highly evolved technique of calling big cats by, you know,
going, here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.
And, uh, for your degree to work.
That's right.
That's right.
And, uh, uh, it usually worked.
Um, but, uh, this time he just, he kind of ignored me.
(09:10):
So I walked back to where he was and when he became aware of me, he,
he turned around and he fixed on me.
And this is, this is something you don't want to see because these, these
predators, you know, they have their, their big challenge is bringing down
their prey.
And so they, uh, the prey is going to move, you know, run away erratically.
(09:35):
And, uh, the predator has to really focus and concentrate on, on the prey
animal in order to catch it and bring it down.
And so you see this, this intense focus.
I've seen it a couple of times directed my way.
And, and you just know down in your gut, this is a bad thing.
This, this, this is not good.
(09:56):
And, and so I took kind of a half step back and he lunged at me
and, and, uh, he, I threw up my arm and he, he bit me, grabbed hold
of my arm.
Now I had, it was a cool morning.
I have a thick fleece jacket.
And so he didn't really, he didn't puncture my arm, but he grabbed it with his
mouth and he grabbed me around the waist with his paws.
(10:18):
And this is where the fact that he was declawed probably saved me because he
couldn't really hold on to me.
And, uh, and he was relatively small cat.
He was only 115 pounds.
And so I was able to push him off, but he immediately came right back up
and grabbed my arm again.
And I pushed him off and he came back up and grabbed my arm again.
(10:41):
And it just kept going like that.
And, and, uh, cougars have a thing, trainers called cougar lock because they,
they're very tenacious.
You can imagine a cougar jumping on the back of a deer and going for a
ride and that cougars that fall off and don't try again, they, they starve to
death.
But the, you know, the ones that keep going, keep trying are, you know, single
(11:05):
-minded about the whole thing.
They're the ones that evolved and continue to survive.
Right.
So he just kept coming.
And I've unfortunately have been bit on occasion by other animals.
And usually, you know, it's over pretty quick.
It happens.
And then, and then you deal with it and you move on and it's all done
(11:27):
with and it's pretty fast, but this, he just kept coming.
I kept pushing him down.
He kept coming back and, and it's, I don't know how long it was.
It's, it seemed like forever.
Uh, you know, it was maybe four or five minutes, but he just kept coming, but
it gave me the time to think about it, which was my first thought was, Hey,
(11:50):
this is, this is bad.
This is, this isn't any fun.
I, I don't think this is a good thing.
Very astute observation.
Yeah.
And, um, so, but it also, you know, I gave me a chance to kind of
figure out what I was going to do.
The students, of course, were close to panic.
(12:11):
They were, you know, looking for direction and what they should do.
And I was telling them, just stay out.
I'm dealing with it.
Just hang on.
And, and the students did everything they were supposed to do correctly.
And, uh, but I, I finally decided, well, I was going to try and get him
back into his enclosure by, by actually getting ahold of him.
(12:33):
And so instead of pushing him down, I, I, you know, just pushing him off me,
I grabbed him by the scruff and, and, and got him down was all four feet
were on the ground.
And then I had the student open the door of his enclosure.
It's on a remote arm.
So they, they do that from outside and they opened it about a foot and I
(12:55):
pushed him in.
And, um, I thought I had pushed him far enough that he would go into the
enclosure, but instead he just backed up real fast and I was squatting down.
So he spun around and he bit me on the butt.
Uh, and you know, embarrassing now, but at the moment I just had to deal with
(13:16):
it.
I suppose there could be worse places to be bit.
Yeah, I guess so.
That's not one of the more flattering spots.
Yeah.
It wasn't life threatening at least.
And, uh, our, uh, our counselor, Chuck Brinkman told me later that Kisu, you
know, got a taste of the other white meat is what he said.
(13:40):
But I, fortunately he didn't hang on.
He just bit me.
And, and then I, and he let go and I grabbed him again.
And this time I pushed him all the way in the enclosure before I let go
and managed to get out and the student shut the door and he was, he was
secure again.
So then, you know, everybody was heaving a sigh of relief, but I knew that
(14:04):
this, you know, this, this is pretty traumatic.
And, uh, I didn't know how badly he had bitten me because, you know, as the
adrenaline is pumping, you don't really feel pain.
And, uh, and, uh, so I knew I probably needed to get some attention.
But I also knew that, you know, the chance as the adrenaline wore off, I might
(14:26):
go into shock and not be able to help myself.
So, so I stepped out of the corridor and looked at the student.
There was a student standing there.
I don't remember who, what student it was, but she's, she's standing there and
she's got, uh, two rakes in her hands.
She was ready to, you know, do battle with that cougar and then save my life
if necessary.
And I, uh, looked at her and I said, you come with me.
(14:49):
And so we walked to the gate of the Karnes area and I stopped there at
the opening gate and I looked back at her and she still had the two rakes
in her hand.
I said, leave those here.
I just need you come with me as I have a shoulder to lean on.
And then we left the area and started walking up to the front of the zoo.
(15:11):
And, um, the, um, uh, then somebody, I don't know who, somebody drove me to
the, uh, ER in Simi Valley.
And, and, uh, then it was kind of funny.
You know, they, they got me in quite a, pretty quickly.
And, um, the, um, uh, the ER doctor who's, who is treating me, you know,
(15:35):
cleaning the wound on my butt.
He's, uh, I, as we're talking, I, I started thinking, you know, I, I can
recognize his, uh, this guy's voice.
Let me close the door.
It wouldn't be a Wild Tales episode without a dog barking in the background.
Right.
So this guy's voice sounded familiar.
(15:55):
And we started, and we both realized about the same time that we had actually
spoken on the phone before this guy was at full-time ER doctor.
But part-time he wrote an article for the county newspaper where he would
interview people in the community and, uh, write up a profile of them.
And he had interviewed me before, and now he was putting betadine on my butt.
(16:18):
It's a small world.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, I, I admire that, you know, that, that could have gave you, you know,
full freedom to take the rest of the day off, but you returned to work that
day.
You came back to the zoo and you did make your, uh, triumphant return to the
amphitheater to greet the students.
And I believe if I recall, you were carrying the pair of jeans you were wearing
(16:40):
that morning and you stuck your fingers through the two holes and the back end
of the jeans.
And the first year students, it being our first day of a future of working with
animals, our eyes are huge.
We're going like, what is happening?
And the second year students were hooting, hollering, screaming, and, and
pretty much laughed at you because.
(17:00):
Yep.
They were probably feeling some, uh, some satisfaction over some of the exams I
had given them in the past.
Probably.
Karma, I guess.
Right.
So, uh, because this was the last century, I had to wait to the end of
the day to go home, to call my mom on the landline, to tell her about
my first day of school until you won't believe what happened.
(17:22):
The director got attacked by a mountain lion and she just panicked and said,
come home now.
I'm like, no, I'm not.
This place is the best.
I love it here.
That's great.
Yeah.
I'm glad you stuck it out.
So am I.
Your mom was much wiser than you.
Oh, you can't say that on a podcast.
(17:43):
She listens.
I roped you into that story because I love it so much, but I invited you
on to tell other stories.
And so I'll let you get into it.
What do you have in mind?
A history of working with animals?
Yeah.
Well, you know, the, the, I've worked with lots of animals and I've had, you
know, special relationships with, with lots of animals, but some of my fondest
(18:08):
memories of interactions with animals actually been with, with animals out in
the wild, animals I didn't know.
And because, you know, it's, it's pretty rare that you get to interact, you get
to see things.
I, one of the, one of my favorite, this was just maybe 10 years ago.
I was, I was scuba diving out at Anacapa Island, one of our channel islands
(18:32):
here off the coast of Ventura County.
And it's part of the Channel Islands National Park.
It's a, it's a great place to scuba dive.
It has tremendous diversity of animals.
It's, it's just, it's fabulous.
And the water can be a little cold, but it's, it's a, it's a great place
to dive.
And it's only 11 miles off the coast to get out to Anacapa Island.
(18:56):
And, and my son and I were diving there.
And as we're cruising along, I spotted an octopus.
Now we don't have the, the big giant Pacific octopus that they have like up in
Puget Sound.
But we have these little two spot octopus.
And I saw this guy, his eyes kind of poking out of this crevice between these
(19:20):
two rocks.
And, and so, you know, and these are the kinds of things that you see if
you take your time.
If when I, early in my career scuba diving, I got into hunting, you know,
abalone and fish and things and, and lobster.
And I kind of gave it up after a while because I realized when you go
(19:47):
diving with that in mind, that's all you see.
You're just, you're just focusing on, you know, what's something I can catch
and eat.
What can I have for dinner tonight?
Right.
And, and you miss all the cool other stuff that's out there.
All the non-edibles.
That's right.
And so you, you know, you slow down and you look more closely and then you,
(20:09):
and you see a lot more.
And so, you know, these octopus are amazing at camouflage, but I, you know, saw
these two eyes sticking out of the crevice.
And so I wondered if, if I might entice this octopus out of the hole.
And so I looked around and I found a shiny piece of shell, probably a piece
of abalone shell.
(20:31):
And, and I carried it over to, and slowly over to the octopus, kind of
presented it to the octopus within a couple inches.
And the octopus just, you know, looked at it and actually came out of the hole
a little bit.
Eyes came up a little higher so he could see.
You could tell he was a little curious about it.
And then a tentacle came out and grabbed and snaked over my hand and then
(20:54):
another tentacle.
And eventually the whole octopus came out of the hole and wrapped around my
hand and, and that shell I had in my fingers.
And he tried to pull my hand back, back into the crevice.
And so we, a little tug of war there, but it was pretty cool.
He went, he went back in at one point and then came back out and did
(21:15):
it again.
And it was very cool that, you know, have that interaction with a, with a wild
animal like that, that we'd never met before.
That is very cool.
That makes me so jealous because I love octopus.
They're one of my favorite animals.
And I remember snorkeling on vacation in Hawaii and that's all I wanted to see.
(21:36):
I saw some amazing wildlife.
I saw, you know, sea turtles and all the beautiful fishes and sea anemones.
But I wanted to see, that was number one on my list.
I wanted to see an octopus, never saw one.
But what kills me is you describe how well they camouflage and they're amazing
camouflagers.
I, I probably swam past a dozen of them and just didn't notice.
And that's, that's what kills me to this day.
I'm like, how many did I miss?
(21:57):
That's what I ask myself.
So next time, right, I'll have to keep, keep a closer eye.
I think once you spot one and you know what to look for, they kind of
just pop out a lot easier.
Right.
Yeah.
You kind of, so I have the advantage of, so this is many years ago as
I was starting the, just before I started the program at Moorpark, started as a
(22:22):
student there, I got a job as on a, the, for Island Packers Company, the boat
company that took people out to the islands.
And I was hired as a floating classroom instructor.
And so that, that was one of my first animal jobs kind of was as a
interpreter.
(22:42):
And, and so the we would take groups of elementary school kids out to Anacapa
Island.
We'd look at whales, gray whales mainly on the way out.
And then, and then we'd anchor at the island and I'd don my scuba gear and
jump in.
And I would collect invertebrates specimens to bring up and bring those up.
(23:06):
And then you had this little, this shallow tank on the boat that we could put
the things in.
And then I could show these to the students and, and tell them about these,
these cool things.
Oh, very cool.
Yeah.
We always anchored in the same place and I got to know the area pretty well.
And so I could, I got to where, you know, I knew that the, the captain
(23:27):
expected I was going to be down about 20 minutes.
So I got to where I could jump in the water and I could collect all
the cool stuff I needed in about five minutes that I can spend other 15 minutes
just sightseeing and, you know, looking for other things.
Forget about the kids, they think you're working.
That's right.
You're just enjoying some me time under the water.
I appreciate that.
That's right.
(23:47):
It was, it was, it was very quiet down there in comparison.
Any octopus there or just the.
Every now and then I would see octopus, but I never really tried to bring one
up because it would just be, you know, it would be too traumatic, I figured,
for the octopus.
And, you know, and they, they are amazing animals.
(24:08):
We're learning, you know, people are learning so much more about that.
They, they really are highly intelligent and they, it's a, you know, it's a, a,
a completely different evolutionary line of brain development compared to our,
our brains or bird brains or anything like that.
I love occasionally you hear a story from an aquarium that just ends up missing
(24:32):
fish from random, random tanks.
And they have to like figure out like, where are these fish going?
And they set up cameras and find out that their octopus is getting out in the
middle of the night and going to other, other tanks to help himself to fish and
then go back to their tank.
I mean, this, I think if they had a, you know, arms and legs and opposable
(24:54):
thumbs, they might be a, you know, main, you know, lead animal on this, on this
planet, not humans.
They'd have us in tanks.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah.
Monterey Bay Aquarium had to figure out by putting a big astroturf, thick
astroturf on the real spiky astroturf on the edge of the aquarium that the
(25:15):
octopus didn't want to crawl over that and stand.
But I mean, the cool thing is they don't, they didn't climb out to escape.
They climbed out to go forage and then come back to their own enclosure.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
I got to interact with a, a greater Pacific octopus at the Aquarium Pacific in
Long Beach.
And it's like one of the highlights of my life and just, and it wasn't even
(25:38):
big.
It was a young one.
I know they can get up like 50 pounds.
This one was barely 10 pounds when I got to meet it, but we got to
feed it and he wrapped his arms around my hand, the little suction cups glue to
you.
And they try to pull you in with the food and they're surprisingly strong at
just even a few pounds.
They have so much, like there's a big ball of muscle.
Right.
(25:59):
Yeah.
And they're so impressive.
That's, that's really cool.
I, as, uh, as a kid, I had, I kept some octopuses in the aquarium at
home.
I had a saltwater aquarium I set up and I would go, we live about 15
miles from the beach, so I could go out to the tide pools and I would
find an octopus and, and bring it home and, uh, and have it in the aquarium.
(26:22):
I had to, the, they're not the easiest things to keep.
Um, I, so I would have to go back to the beach, usually to the, like
the jetty at the Harbor.
And, uh, then I'd have to catch little crabs, line shore crabs are called, and,
uh, take those home to feed to the octopus.
(26:44):
In fact, I think the last time I was doing that, actually, I had, it was
just after a summer after high school.
And I had, um, I had managed to break my big toe at, uh, I was
at, um, one place that I was in marine biology class at, uh, actually taught at
(27:05):
Moorpark college.
And, uh, we did our labs at a, at a place called Rincon Island.
And this man-made oil Island off the coast up here that you can drive out
to Santa Barbara, Ventura.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just North of Ventura.
Yeah.
And there's a mile long causeway you drive over to it.
And, uh, it was like the end of the semester.
(27:26):
And I, and I, my foot slipped on a rock and jammed into another rock and
I had to crack my big toe right down the middle.
And so I was, I was in a, I remember I was in a cast up
to my knee and it was a walking cast, had a rubber thing on the bottom,
but I had the next day I had to start, I started a summer job at
(27:47):
Point Mugu Naval Air Station.
And I had to go, I was on crutches and I had to go all over
the base getting different, you know, getting pictures taken here and signing
papers here, there, and so forth as it was miserable.
I, I didn't use the crutches after that.
I was, it was, my arms were too sore, but I did, I did need to
(28:07):
get, I had this cast on my leg.
I needed to get, um, um, crabs for my octopus.
And I ended up in the course of, you know, going to catch crabs.
I ended up getting the cast wet and just, and destroying it.
But, uh, no, no, I knew Gary, this all checks out.
(28:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I would say to anyone listening, and I, I, I did the same, you know,
when I was young, you know, I bring, you know, flying like wildlife and lizards
and snakes and bring them home and put them in, you know, trying to keep them
as pets.
I don't recommend that now.
I tell my kids too, cause they wanted to do that.
And I'm like, you know, let's let nature be and let it live out in nature.
(28:48):
And that's why I recommend to anyone listening.
And you know, we, it's something when we were younger that everyone, that kids
just did, but yeah, that's true.
But we grew up.
I did that.
I had, I had snakes.
I brought home from the, you know, local hills.
I get wonder around the, the, I remember, but you're right.
It's, it's, you learn to appreciate the single animals out in nature instead.
(29:14):
And I got to take my son when he was, I don't know, about 11 or
12.
I got to take him out to Santa Cruz Island, another one of the islands out
here.
It's part of the national park.
And, and we found one of the endemic gopher snakes out there and it was
climbing up in a bush.
(29:35):
And it was, I had never seen one climb up in a bush like that.
Usually you see them down on the ground and, and my son wanted to catch it
and I had to restrain him and just say, no, let's, let's watch this.
This is really cool, man.
You're, you're probably not likely to see a snake climbing again.
And so let's take an opportunity to sit here and watch.
Yeah.
You can learn so much just observing them in nature.
(29:57):
And I, I love how you
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hello and welcome into Wild Tales.
I'm your host Mike Bona and thanks to If Mars Had Waves for my intro music.
I don't think I've talked about that before.
I know I've made a social media post, but on the podcast I want to thank
the band If Mars Has Waves.
They're a band from up in Northern California.
You can find their music on Bandcamp.
(00:39):
It's a great little surf rock band with a song called Move In Day.
How did I end up with this song and this band as my theme music?
Well, it helps if your brother is the bassist for the band.
Hey, Bob!
So anyway, thanks for tuning in again or if it's your first time, thanks for
checking me out.
I hope you enjoy.
I'm really excited about my guest today.
(01:00):
His name is Gary Wilson.
He is a former instructor and director and student of the teaching zoo at
Moorpark College.
He is currently retired.
A lifetime working with animals, so he has a lot of great stories to tell.
So it was a real pleasure to talk to him.
Twice we'll get into that in the interview, but we had some recording issues at
(01:21):
the beginning, so he was nice enough to hop on again to re-record.
It's the trials and errors of learning how to do a podcast.
So without further ado, let's get into it.
Here's Gary Wilson.
All right, well, let's get into it.
So Gary Wilson, you are the former instructor at Moorpark College, America's
(01:47):
teaching zoo.
That's right.
It's got a new name now.
I don't remember off the top of my head.
It's the teaching zoo at Moorpark College.
Okay, so just a slight change.
Yeah, slight change.
It's still part of Moorpark College.
Way back when it was my idea, the name of America's teaching zoo, because I
(02:09):
thought it was appropriate that it established our preeminence in the field.
I mean, that was back before social engineering stuff, but it did come up early
in browsers, I think in searches, search history in America's teaching zoo.
But most of the people in the community just calls it the zoo at Moorpark
(02:32):
College.
That's right.
And you taught training?
And yeah, that's right.
Animal training, animal behavior, animal diversity.
And two aspects you really have to teach when teaching someone training that a
trainer has to learn is patience and consistency.
And if you can learn that, it can apply through many factors in one's life,
(02:55):
including podcasting.
Because I'm just going to go out and say this for everyone listening.
This is the second time today we're recording this because you learn through
trial and error.
This is a fairly new podcast.
And the first time we went through this, we didn't record.
It didn't record.
It's out in the ether.
(03:15):
We had a nice, pleasant chat that no one will ever hear.
Well, you can blame it on me.
Hey, it was the new guy using that software.
He screwed it up.
It's the old guy trying to use technology.
Look, it could very well have been as much my fault, but we'll just look past
it.
But I do want to talk about my earliest memory of you.
(03:37):
What was that?
Well, you used to be the director at America's Teaching Zoom.
I was a student, and my first day as a student was August 1999.
And me and 50 other aspiring, very eager students walked in and sat down in the
(03:58):
amphitheater to be greeted with what was going to be our next two years ahead
of us.
It was us.
It was roughly 50 or so second year students.
You were supposed to come out to welcome us and introduce us to the teaching
zoo and our future.
But you weren't there, Gary.
You weren't there.
You had other plans that day.
(04:19):
You were at the emergency room.
You had the emergency room because, well, I'll let you, why were you in the
emergency room?
It wasn't, it wasn't by choice, really.
It rarely is.
Yeah, yeah.
I had, so this was the first day of Orientation Week, and which at Moore Park,
(04:40):
at the Edom program, we started a week before the rest of the college started,
because we needed that time to get the new students up and going before classes
started.
And that morning, I had come in for the morning area before all you fresh-faced
first years arrived.
(05:02):
And I had just come back from a couple weeks on vacation.
And so I was, that morning, my responsibility was to oversee cleaning in the
carnivore area.
And we had a mountain lion named Kisu, a cougar, that had, was a former pet.
(05:25):
He, a guy had gone to Texas and bought this cougar, as a young cougar, in
a hotel in Texas.
Well, where else are you going to get a mountain lion?
It's a Texas hotel.
That's where you get them.
Everyone knows that's where they come from.
I imagine there's a YouTube instructional video on how to do that.
And, well, he brought it back to California.
(05:47):
He had it de-clawed on all four feet, which is pretty extreme.
And the cat, as a result, the cat limped somewhat.
That, in later years, I think that he had some pain in his feet and that
caused him to be kind of grumpy.
And that may have led to the situation I ran into, but not sure.
(06:09):
Anyway, he and I were buddies.
I hung out with him.
I'd go into his enclosure and sit with him and he'd fall asleep with me in
there.
I'd take him for walks.
You know, one of your other guests, Mara Rodriguez, she would take him out for
walks.
He was, you know, he was a pretty good cat.
And we had, of course, we had gotten him from California Fish and Game and we'd
confiscated him from the guy who had brought him into the state illegally.
(06:34):
So anyway, during, while I was gone on vacation, the cat had been moved from
one corner of the Karnes area to the other corner.
And so a different enclosure on the other end of the complex.
And I don't even remember why we did that.
(06:56):
But I had, in the past, in doing the cleaning, we
would shift the animal from their home enclosure into our training arena.
And that way the students could go in and clean the animal's enclosure
(07:18):
thoroughly without having to worry about the animal, of course.
And so it was a, you know, safe way to do it.
Well, this cat, because he was very handleable and like I said, we were
buddies, I had gotten in the routine because he sometimes didn't go right away
into the arena.
So I'd gotten into the habit of going into the corridor, the corridor that
(07:42):
connected his home enclosure with the arena.
I'd go in there and I would kind of encourage him to go into the arena.
So I went into the corridor this morning, planning to do the same thing.
And I stationed myself down near the door to the arena and told the students to
(08:03):
let him into the corridor.
So they opened the door of his enclosure and he came into the corridor and he
trotted right down to me and looked in the arena, pretty much ignored me, just
looked in the arena and then trotted back toward his enclosure.
The students had closed his door so he couldn't go back into his enclosure, but
(08:28):
he stopped at that end and was looking in the nearby enclosure where Bobcat
lived.
And so I called to him, you know, trying to get him to come back to
me.
I found that, you know, you have a, you know, you develop special techniques
(08:49):
with the animals you work with.
And I had this highly evolved technique of calling big cats by, you know,
going, here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.
And, uh, for your degree to work.
That's right.
That's right.
And, uh, uh, it usually worked.
Um, but, uh, this time he just, he kind of ignored me.
(09:10):
So I walked back to where he was and when he became aware of me, he,
he turned around and he fixed on me.
And this is, this is something you don't want to see because these, these
predators, you know, they have their, their big challenge is bringing down
their prey.
And so they, uh, the prey is going to move, you know, run away erratically.
(09:35):
And, uh, the predator has to really focus and concentrate on, on the prey
animal in order to catch it and bring it down.
And so you see this, this intense focus.
I've seen it a couple of times directed my way.
And, and you just know down in your gut, this is a bad thing.
This, this, this is not good.
(09:56):
And, and so I took kind of a half step back and he lunged at me
and, and, uh, he, I threw up my arm and he, he bit me, grabbed hold
of my arm.
Now I had, it was a cool morning.
I have a thick fleece jacket.
And so he didn't really, he didn't puncture my arm, but he grabbed it with his
mouth and he grabbed me around the waist with his paws.
(10:18):
And this is where the fact that he was declawed probably saved me because he
couldn't really hold on to me.
And, uh, and he was relatively small cat.
He was only 115 pounds.
And so I was able to push him off, but he immediately came right back up
and grabbed my arm again.
And I pushed him off and he came back up and grabbed my arm again.
(10:41):
And it just kept going like that.
And, and, uh, cougars have a thing, trainers called cougar lock because they,
they're very tenacious.
You can imagine a cougar jumping on the back of a deer and going for a
ride and that cougars that fall off and don't try again, they, they starve to
death.
But the, you know, the ones that keep going, keep trying are, you know, single
(11:05):
-minded about the whole thing.
They're the ones that evolved and continue to survive.
Right.
So he just kept coming.
And I've unfortunately have been bit on occasion by other animals.
And usually, you know, it's over pretty quick.
It happens.
And then, and then you deal with it and you move on and it's all done
(11:27):
with and it's pretty fast, but this, he just kept coming.
I kept pushing him down.
He kept coming back and, and it's, I don't know how long it was.
It's, it seemed like forever.
Uh, you know, it was maybe four or five minutes, but he just kept coming, but
it gave me the time to think about it, which was my first thought was, Hey,
(11:50):
this is, this is bad.
This is, this isn't any fun.
I, I don't think this is a good thing.
Very astute observation.
Yeah.
And, um, so, but it also, you know, I gave me a chance to kind of
figure out what I was going to do.
The students, of course, were close to panic.
(12:11):
They were, you know, looking for direction and what they should do.
And I was telling them, just stay out.
I'm dealing with it.
Just hang on.
And, and the students did everything they were supposed to do correctly.
And, uh, but I, I finally decided, well, I was going to try and get him
back into his enclosure by, by actually getting ahold of him.
(12:33):
And so instead of pushing him down, I, I, you know, just pushing him off me,
I grabbed him by the scruff and, and, and got him down was all four feet
were on the ground.
And then I had the student open the door of his enclosure.
It's on a remote arm.
So they, they do that from outside and they opened it about a foot and I
(12:55):
pushed him in.
And, um, I thought I had pushed him far enough that he would go into the
enclosure, but instead he just backed up real fast and I was squatting down.
So he spun around and he bit me on the butt.
Uh, and you know, embarrassing now, but at the moment I just had to deal with
(13:16):
it.
I suppose there could be worse places to be bit.
Yeah, I guess so.
That's not one of the more flattering spots.
Yeah.
It wasn't life threatening at least.
And, uh, our, uh, our counselor, Chuck Brinkman told me later that Kisu, you
know, got a taste of the other white meat is what he said.
(13:40):
But I, fortunately he didn't hang on.
He just bit me.
And, and then I, and he let go and I grabbed him again.
And this time I pushed him all the way in the enclosure before I let go
and managed to get out and the student shut the door and he was, he was
secure again.
So then, you know, everybody was heaving a sigh of relief, but I knew that
(14:04):
this, you know, this, this is pretty traumatic.
And, uh, I didn't know how badly he had bitten me because, you know, as the
adrenaline is pumping, you don't really feel pain.
And, uh, and, uh, so I knew I probably needed to get some attention.
But I also knew that, you know, the chance as the adrenaline wore off, I might
(14:26):
go into shock and not be able to help myself.
So, so I stepped out of the corridor and looked at the student.
There was a student standing there.
I don't remember who, what student it was, but she's, she's standing there and
she's got, uh, two rakes in her hands.
She was ready to, you know, do battle with that cougar and then save my life
if necessary.
And I, uh, looked at her and I said, you come with me.
(14:49):
And so we walked to the gate of the Karnes area and I stopped there at
the opening gate and I looked back at her and she still had the two rakes
in her hand.
I said, leave those here.
I just need you come with me as I have a shoulder to lean on.
And then we left the area and started walking up to the front of the zoo.
(15:11):
And, um, the, um, uh, then somebody, I don't know who, somebody drove me to
the, uh, ER in Simi Valley.
And, and, uh, then it was kind of funny.
You know, they, they got me in quite a, pretty quickly.
And, um, the, um, uh, the ER doctor who's, who is treating me, you know,
(15:35):
cleaning the wound on my butt.
He's, uh, I, as we're talking, I, I started thinking, you know, I, I can
recognize his, uh, this guy's voice.
Let me close the door.
It wouldn't be a Wild Tales episode without a dog barking in the background.
Right.
So this guy's voice sounded familiar.
(15:55):
And we started, and we both realized about the same time that we had actually
spoken on the phone before this guy was at full-time ER doctor.
But part-time he wrote an article for the county newspaper where he would
interview people in the community and, uh, write up a profile of them.
And he had interviewed me before, and now he was putting betadine on my butt.
(16:18):
It's a small world.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, I, I admire that, you know, that, that could have gave you, you know,
full freedom to take the rest of the day off, but you returned to work that
day.
You came back to the zoo and you did make your, uh, triumphant return to the
amphitheater to greet the students.
And I believe if I recall, you were carrying the pair of jeans you were wearing
(16:40):
that morning and you stuck your fingers through the two holes and the back end
of the jeans.
And the first year students, it being our first day of a future of working with
animals, our eyes are huge.
We're going like, what is happening?
And the second year students were hooting, hollering, screaming, and, and
pretty much laughed at you because.
(17:00):
Yep.
They were probably feeling some, uh, some satisfaction over some of the exams I
had given them in the past.
Probably.
Karma, I guess.
Right.
So, uh, because this was the last century, I had to wait to the end of
the day to go home, to call my mom on the landline, to tell her about
my first day of school until you won't believe what happened.
(17:22):
The director got attacked by a mountain lion and she just panicked and said,
come home now.
I'm like, no, I'm not.
This place is the best.
I love it here.
That's great.
Yeah.
I'm glad you stuck it out.
So am I.
Your mom was much wiser than you.
Oh, you can't say that on a podcast.
(17:43):
She listens.
I roped you into that story because I love it so much, but I invited you
on to tell other stories.
And so I'll let you get into it.
What do you have in mind?
A history of working with animals?
Yeah.
Well, you know, the, the, I've worked with lots of animals and I've had, you
know, special relationships with, with lots of animals, but some of my fondest
(18:08):
memories of interactions with animals actually been with, with animals out in
the wild, animals I didn't know.
And because, you know, it's, it's pretty rare that you get to interact, you get
to see things.
I, one of the, one of my favorite, this was just maybe 10 years ago.
I was, I was scuba diving out at Anacapa Island, one of our channel islands
(18:32):
here off the coast of Ventura County.
And it's part of the Channel Islands National Park.
It's a, it's a great place to scuba dive.
It has tremendous diversity of animals.
It's, it's just, it's fabulous.
And the water can be a little cold, but it's, it's a, it's a great place
to dive.
And it's only 11 miles off the coast to get out to Anacapa Island.
(18:56):
And, and my son and I were diving there.
And as we're cruising along, I spotted an octopus.
Now we don't have the, the big giant Pacific octopus that they have like up in
Puget Sound.
But we have these little two spot octopus.
And I saw this guy, his eyes kind of poking out of this crevice between these
(19:20):
two rocks.
And, and so, you know, and these are the kinds of things that you see if
you take your time.
If when I, early in my career scuba diving, I got into hunting, you know,
abalone and fish and things and, and lobster.
And I kind of gave it up after a while because I realized when you go
(19:47):
diving with that in mind, that's all you see.
You're just, you're just focusing on, you know, what's something I can catch
and eat.
What can I have for dinner tonight?
Right.
And, and you miss all the cool other stuff that's out there.
All the non-edibles.
That's right.
And so you, you know, you slow down and you look more closely and then you,
(20:09):
and you see a lot more.
And so, you know, these octopus are amazing at camouflage, but I, you know, saw
these two eyes sticking out of the crevice.
And so I wondered if, if I might entice this octopus out of the hole.
And so I looked around and I found a shiny piece of shell, probably a piece
of abalone shell.
(20:31):
And, and I carried it over to, and slowly over to the octopus, kind of
presented it to the octopus within a couple inches.
And the octopus just, you know, looked at it and actually came out of the hole
a little bit.
Eyes came up a little higher so he could see.
You could tell he was a little curious about it.
And then a tentacle came out and grabbed and snaked over my hand and then
(20:54):
another tentacle.
And eventually the whole octopus came out of the hole and wrapped around my
hand and, and that shell I had in my fingers.
And he tried to pull my hand back, back into the crevice.
And so we, a little tug of war there, but it was pretty cool.
He went, he went back in at one point and then came back out and did
(21:15):
it again.
And it was very cool that, you know, have that interaction with a, with a wild
animal like that, that we'd never met before.
That is very cool.
That makes me so jealous because I love octopus.
They're one of my favorite animals.
And I remember snorkeling on vacation in Hawaii and that's all I wanted to see.
(21:36):
I saw some amazing wildlife.
I saw, you know, sea turtles and all the beautiful fishes and sea anemones.
But I wanted to see, that was number one on my list.
I wanted to see an octopus, never saw one.
But what kills me is you describe how well they camouflage and they're amazing
camouflagers.
I, I probably swam past a dozen of them and just didn't notice.
And that's, that's what kills me to this day.
I'm like, how many did I miss?
(21:57):
That's what I ask myself.
So next time, right, I'll have to keep, keep a closer eye.
I think once you spot one and you know what to look for, they kind of
just pop out a lot easier.
Right.
Yeah.
You kind of, so I have the advantage of, so this is many years ago as
I was starting the, just before I started the program at Moorpark, started as a
(22:22):
student there, I got a job as on a, the, for Island Packers Company, the boat
company that took people out to the islands.
And I was hired as a floating classroom instructor.
And so that, that was one of my first animal jobs kind of was as a
interpreter.
(22:42):
And, and so the we would take groups of elementary school kids out to Anacapa
Island.
We'd look at whales, gray whales mainly on the way out.
And then, and then we'd anchor at the island and I'd don my scuba gear and
jump in.
And I would collect invertebrates specimens to bring up and bring those up.
(23:06):
And then you had this little, this shallow tank on the boat that we could put
the things in.
And then I could show these to the students and, and tell them about these,
these cool things.
Oh, very cool.
Yeah.
We always anchored in the same place and I got to know the area pretty well.
And so I could, I got to where, you know, I knew that the, the captain
(23:27):
expected I was going to be down about 20 minutes.
So I got to where I could jump in the water and I could collect all
the cool stuff I needed in about five minutes that I can spend other 15 minutes
just sightseeing and, you know, looking for other things.
Forget about the kids, they think you're working.
That's right.
You're just enjoying some me time under the water.
I appreciate that.
That's right.
(23:47):
It was, it was, it was very quiet down there in comparison.
Any octopus there or just the.
Every now and then I would see octopus, but I never really tried to bring one
up because it would just be, you know, it would be too traumatic, I figured,
for the octopus.
And, you know, and they, they are amazing animals.
(24:08):
We're learning, you know, people are learning so much more about that.
They, they really are highly intelligent and they, it's a, you know, it's a, a,
a completely different evolutionary line of brain development compared to our,
our brains or bird brains or anything like that.
I love occasionally you hear a story from an aquarium that just ends up missing
(24:32):
fish from random, random tanks.
And they have to like figure out like, where are these fish going?
And they set up cameras and find out that their octopus is getting out in the
middle of the night and going to other, other tanks to help himself to fish and
then go back to their tank.
I mean, this, I think if they had a, you know, arms and legs and opposable
(24:54):
thumbs, they might be a, you know, main, you know, lead animal on this, on this
planet, not humans.
They'd have us in tanks.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah.
Monterey Bay Aquarium had to figure out by putting a big astroturf, thick
astroturf on the real spiky astroturf on the edge of the aquarium that the
(25:15):
octopus didn't want to crawl over that and stand.
But I mean, the cool thing is they don't, they didn't climb out to escape.
They climbed out to go forage and then come back to their own enclosure.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
I got to interact with a, a greater Pacific octopus at the Aquarium Pacific in
Long Beach.
And it's like one of the highlights of my life and just, and it wasn't even
(25:38):
big.
It was a young one.
I know they can get up like 50 pounds.
This one was barely 10 pounds when I got to meet it, but we got to
feed it and he wrapped his arms around my hand, the little suction cups glue to
you.
And they try to pull you in with the food and they're surprisingly strong at
just even a few pounds.
They have so much, like there's a big ball of muscle.
Right.
(25:59):
Yeah.
And they're so impressive.
That's, that's really cool.
I, as, uh, as a kid, I had, I kept some octopuses in the aquarium at
home.
I had a saltwater aquarium I set up and I would go, we live about 15
miles from the beach, so I could go out to the tide pools and I would
find an octopus and, and bring it home and, uh, and have it in the aquarium.
(26:22):
I had to, the, they're not the easiest things to keep.
Um, I, so I would have to go back to the beach, usually to the, like
the jetty at the Harbor.
And, uh, then I'd have to catch little crabs, line shore crabs are called, and,
uh, take those home to feed to the octopus.
(26:44):
In fact, I think the last time I was doing that, actually, I had, it was
just after a summer after high school.
And I had, um, I had managed to break my big toe at, uh, I was
at, um, one place that I was in marine biology class at, uh, actually taught at
(27:05):
Moorpark college.
And, uh, we did our labs at a, at a place called Rincon Island.
And this man-made oil Island off the coast up here that you can drive out
to Santa Barbara, Ventura.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just North of Ventura.
Yeah.
And there's a mile long causeway you drive over to it.
And, uh, it was like the end of the semester.
(27:26):
And I, and I, my foot slipped on a rock and jammed into another rock and
I had to crack my big toe right down the middle.
And so I was, I was in a, I remember I was in a cast up
to my knee and it was a walking cast, had a rubber thing on the bottom,
but I had the next day I had to start, I started a summer job at
(27:47):
Point Mugu Naval Air Station.
And I had to go, I was on crutches and I had to go all over
the base getting different, you know, getting pictures taken here and signing
papers here, there, and so forth as it was miserable.
I, I didn't use the crutches after that.
I was, it was, my arms were too sore, but I did, I did need to
(28:07):
get, I had this cast on my leg.
I needed to get, um, um, crabs for my octopus.
And I ended up in the course of, you know, going to catch crabs.
I ended up getting the cast wet and just, and destroying it.
But, uh, no, no, I knew Gary, this all checks out.
(28:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I would say to anyone listening, and I, I, I did the same, you know,
when I was young, you know, I bring, you know, flying like wildlife and lizards
and snakes and bring them home and put them in, you know, trying to keep them
as pets.
I don't recommend that now.
I tell my kids too, cause they wanted to do that.
And I'm like, you know, let's let nature be and let it live out in nature.
(28:48):
And that's why I recommend to anyone listening.
And you know, we, it's something when we were younger that everyone, that kids
just did, but yeah, that's true.
But we grew up.
I did that.
I had, I had snakes.
I brought home from the, you know, local hills.
I get wonder around the, the, I remember, but you're right.
It's, it's, you learn to appreciate the single animals out in nature instead.
(29:14):
And I got to take my son when he was, I don't know, about 11 or
12.
I got to take him out to Santa Cruz Island, another one of the islands out
here.
It's part of the national park.
And, and we found one of the endemic gopher snakes out there and it was
climbing up in a bush.
(29:35):
And it was, I had never seen one climb up in a bush like that.
Usually you see them down on the ground and, and my son wanted to catch it
and I had to restrain him and just say, no, let's, let's watch this.
This is really cool, man.
You're, you're probably not likely to see a snake climbing again.
And so let's take an opportunity to sit here and watch.
Yeah.
You can learn so much just observing them in nature.
(29:57):
And I, I love how you
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