I started several businesses from scratch and have found you can always count on Murphy’s Law taking up more time than anticipated.  The first time I needed to raise money to start a business I visited with Ohio’s Dept of Commerce.  They had no funding for start ups and recommended that I just raise the money myself.  I accepted this advice and immediately tried to use the law of averages by writing an email announcing I needed to raise several million dollars and sent it to every email address I had.  I also asked each recipient to pass it on to their contacts.

The next thing I knew I received a call from another state agency, the Ohio Dept of Securities, followed by a cease and desist order.  Fortunately no money had changed hands and I did not face fines or worse.  After spending a lot of time with securities attorneys and finally hiring an investment banker we were able to raise the money.  But this unexpected problem had delayed our plans, cost us additional dollars we did not have, and absorbed a lot of time.

Starting Zoo and Aquarium Visitor has been no different.  Most recently, my laptop was giving me intermittent problems, but like anyone else using an MS operating system I just used work arounds.  Then at the beginning of March, the screen died and everything shut down.  Turns out, the motherboard and disc drive were dead.  Unfortunately, many of the files existed only on my laptop and I was not backing up (yes, I do know better).

After having the hard drive at a data recovery service for a month they concluded everything is lost and not recoverable.

For everyone who sent me emails during the past 6-7 weeks, please don’t assume I received them.

Another unexpectant but consistent problem we have encountered is with the internal politics within the zoo and aquarium industry associations. 

Some zoo organizations discourage their members and mandate that their employees not associate with non-accredited or non-organization members.  Most senior zoo executives follow this mandate while the professionals (vets, zookeepers, aquarists, etc.) have friendships that transcend the entire wildlife spectrum.  For example, elephant zookeepers talk to keepers in circuses about transportation, and keepers working at the elephant sanctuary about geriatric care, etc.  To avoid detection of being caught communicating with non-approved contacts many zookeepers have gmail, hotmail, or yahoo accounts.  They also use either a screen name or alias when communicating outside their approved community.

This restriction also transcends to include the media.  To some extent I can understand the desire by administrators and their PR staff to control the flow of information outside the facility.  They are afraid that one misstatement by a staff member will result in PETA using their facility as the poster child for a fundraiser.

I don’t believe there is a zoo or aquarium facility in the U.S. where we do not directly correspond with some staff members.  But because of the repercussions we know most employees would face, we do not publish any news that is not from the PR department, a zoo director, or has already been reported in other media entities.

For the most part we try to stay away from bad news and animal deaths.  Marilee Menard, Executive Director at AMMPA gave me some good advice that I have taken to heart.  She said reporting animal deaths can easily get misconstrued.  If we were to report all captive gorillas or elephants passing away within a 12 month period, it would present a distorted image.  There are a few anti-captive animal organizations would announce a trend and use our announcements to launch fund raising drives.

Animals in zoos overall live a much greater lifespan than those in the wild.  They have stress but none from either predators or man.  They also receive better health care than most humans on this planet.  In the wild, something as simple as a thorn in an animal’s paw can result in death due to infection.  Almost all zoo and aquarium species live to adulthood vs. a small percentage in the wild.

We have enjoyed the many new friendships and contacts we have acquired since starting our site and becoming active in this robust industry.

In the future, I hope to do as good of a job of keeping everyone informed as Alicia and Brittany do in their blogs.

Rudy

Rudy Socha is the CEO of Zoo and Aquarium Visitor.  He can be contacted offlist at rudy@zandavisitor.com