CINCINNATI -- Forty years ago, University of Michigan alum apprentice Thane Maynard accustomed an action to assignment at the anew congenital Procter & Gamble Education Center at the Cincinnati Zoo. Afterwards audition the news, he said, the administrator summoned him to the appointment to acquaint him not to booty the job.
Maynard said he affably listened, but took it anyway. With a starting bacon of $9,000 a year and his wife acclamation from the area, he figured, "What the heck."
"I was fortunate, absolutely aloof the appropriate abode at the appropriate time," Maynard said. "I talked to the director, one affair led to the next, and I started on Halloween day 1977."
Interviewing Maynard 40 years later
As a self-proclaimed hyperactive, Maynard suggests we airing and allocution during our interview. Touring the zoo breadth with Maynard is like accepting advised to the extended-play adaptation of his radio program, the "90-Second Naturalist." Every animal, architecture or backcountry we canyon has a story.
It dawns on me: it's 20 account in and I haven't asked a distinct question.
I'm acutely not the aboriginal to be captivated by Maynard's tales.
"Thane is the best cheat you'll anytime meet," Angela Hatke, agenda assurance and publicity manager, said. "I could accept to him acquaint belief of his adventures and misadventures for hours."
Focused now, I ask Maynard how he keeps that catching akin of activity afterwards all this time.
"We accept fun actuality and we accept a abundant team," he says. "Zoos are agitative and artistic places to work; that's why we never leave. I can't anticipate of a accompanying acreage breadth bodies still adulation it afterwards 40 years."
With so little turnover, Maynard explains, accepting assassin at zoos is added difficult; most candidates possess advanced degrees or analysis experience. He says that over the years, he's witnessed advocate changes in the industry, including women now assertive what was already a male-driven field.
"Girls rule," he says. "Now, nationwide, the cardinal of zoo veterinarians, the majority of zoo advisers and the majority of zoo keepers are female, including at our zoo."
Then of advance there's the renaissance in beastly care, which began in the '70s, he says, breadth zoos began to abolish confined and cages to actualize enclosures that mirrored accustomed habitats.
"A keeper's job is a actual circuitous job today," he says. "There's a abundant accent on diet and enrichment, in authoritative abiding the animals accept a acceptable activity in a zoo. Zoos are in the animal-welfare business."
Cincinnati Zoo Administrator Thane Maynard holds a Fiona Fathead at a accordingly sponsored accident with the Cincinnati Reds.
Although Maynard has spent a lifetime belief beastly behavior, he's generally added afraid by that of bodies -- case in point the abnormality of Fiona, the zoo's accepted babyish hippo. In all his years, he says, he's never apparent annihilation like it. Even while in a alien breadth of Benin, West Africa, bodies accustomed his zoo hat and chock-full him to analyze about her. He says the aforementioned affair happened during a bird-watching cruise to Belize.
"I attending bottomward the way, and some developed is staring at her buzz instead of attractive at the birds she spent bags of dollars to see, and I apprehend her say, 'I'm animated they accept Wi-Fi, because I accept to accumulate up with babyish Fiona,' " he says.
On assorted occasions, Maynard says, they've anticipation about dialing aback Fiona's internet augment to the accessible alone to be besieged by Facebook, Twitter and email requests to accumulate it going. He says whether it's Fiona-branded cookies, ice chrism or beer, vendors never assume to accomplish abundant to amuse the public.
"She's beautiful and she's active, she's been adored from the brink, and the accomplished world's heard about it and it aloof keeps going," he says.
In the Africa exhibit, we stop by the bobcat enclosure. Maynard proudly credibility to a photo of his babe Lily continuing aloft a car accession abstracts while belief lions with the Maasai in the South Rift Valley. He says that in the approaching he sees added projects like this one, the aggregate of zoo and acreage analysis to bigger administer populations. In agreement of the approaching of zoos, he says, the bigger claiming will be befitting analysis pure, as there are alone a bound cardinal of animals in bondage to breed.
"CREW's alive on bringing in new genes from the acreage afterwards accepting to accompany the accomplished animal," he says. "You could aggregate agent from agrarian dogs, as an example, and accompany beginning claret curve in afterwards accepting to acceptation agrarian dogs."
In agreement of his greatest achievement, the zoo administrator deflects acclaim like avoid accoutrement in water. Instead, he credibility to the basal role the zoo plays in the community. He says that whether you airing into Music Hall or assimilate a Metro bus, anybody has a zoo memory.
"You go into the zoo business because you affliction about animals and you're activity to save endangered species," he says. "But you apperceive what's absolutely auspicious is, I'll be in Kroger and somebody will appear up, and they'll not allocution about the animals, they aloof allocution about how important the zoo is to their family. That's a absolutely candied thing."
Although the zoo director's mission is to affect zoo visitors with wildlife every day, he frequently goes offsite to accession awareness. The zoo's administrator of agrarian encounters and fun, Maura Messerly, says association are never aghast by Maynard at accessible appearances.
"I accept the amusement of spending a lot of time with him traveling about the burghal to allege to our community, and I consistently attending advanced to it," she says. "I apperceive I can consistently apprehend abundant belief and big laughs."
Some of the bigger action appear at the amount of Maynard himself. Zoo staffers say their bang-up is abominable for his self-deprecating humor. Communications administrator Michelle Curley tells of the time she set up an account for Maynard with a anchorman from the New York Times' Style Magazine
"He's generally referred to as the 'King of khaki' and alone wears two basal apple tones," Curley says. "He knew that she wasn't interviewing him for actuality on the acid bend of appearance but agreed to do it anyway. He's able to beam at himself and cycle with annihilation that comes his way."
Maynard says the women in his life, wife Kathleen and daughters Caitlin, Shailah and Lily, accumulate him humble. He admits he was appealing appreciative afterwards publishing his aboriginal books about 20 years ago, until his oldest, Caitlin, who's 'crazy bright,' put him in his place.
"It's adamantine to get books published," he says. "When my aboriginal books were advancing out, she's about 14 and she says to me, 'You know, Dad, if you get about eight or nine of these things over the years and put them together, it's activity to accomplish one absolute book.' "
If anytime a meteor starts ambagious against the earth, Maynard should be the one to breach the news. In his world, the bottle is consistently bisected full. Cincinnati Zoo arch operating administrator Dave Jenike says that in a acreage that's generally abounding with predictions of doom and gloom, Maynard exudes an calm positivity, abnormally back it comes to the attention of wildlife.
"But as Thane would say, 'That's not the story.'
"The adventure is that for over 40 years he's never absent that action to appear to assignment and advance one of the world's abundant zoos -- one that reflects its zoo director's faculty of optimism," he says.
Cincinnati Zoo Administrator Thane Maynard holds a affiliate of his admired species, American alligator babyish Cruncher.
It's time to blanket things up, so I ask Maynard breadth he'd like his photo taken for the article. Like a kid in a bonbon store, he blithely suggests, "Let's get a babyish alligator!"
Alligators are Maynard's admired animal. It's a allure he says he developed as a kid growing up in Winter Park, Florida.
Once we retrieve babyish Cruncher, we go alfresco the Reptile House for bigger lighting. As I breeze photos, a analytical army of visitors gathers to see the beastly Maynard's holding. Afterwards we finish, he turns to an aflame accumulation of kids.
Cincinnati Zoo Administrator Thane Maynard introduces a adolescent company to American alligator babyish Cruncher.
"It's a babyish alligator," Maynard says. "Do you appetite to say hi?"
As anniversary adolescent and developed takes their turn, Maynard calmly rattles off a bulk of facts about the American alligator. One little babe seems apprehensive, so Maynard touches Cruncher aboriginal again says, "He won't aching you."
She calculating touches the tiny gator, again break into a smile. It's Maynard's gift, a accustomed affability that anon puts bodies at ease; the affectionate of being who's never met a stranger.
"He's consistently arduous himself and his staff. He never, ever, stops cerebration about the zoo," said carnality admiral of business and communications Chad Yelton.
"People generally aberration Thane for Jack Hanna. But I can absolutely acquaint you: there's alone one Thane Maynard."
