General Chat

Well I never !

What a strange request.
Not sure how much Chanel will be offered though.

http://www.kentlive.news/this-is-why-a-zoo-is-asking-people-to-donate-their-old-perfumes-for-their-tigers/story-30352156-detail/story.html

I found some unopened old perfume belonging to my mum.
It's worth more now, than when it was new!! :-D

I should imagine there are other smelly things they could use - like herbs :-S

John Aspinall appears to have been a bit of a liar and cheat - I wonder if his son is a 'Chip off the old block'.
Old perfumes go for quite a bit of money - especially Chanel - and people will also buy empty perfume bottles. :-(

I worked for a Private Investogator when in my 20s, and remember enquiries to do with Aspinall then. Quite a devious man, I believe.

Nice company you kept, Rollo

Lizx

I wouldn't want to claim to be his 'mate' :-|

It impresses him.

This article is from 2014:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/big-cats-and-cologne-e2809cthey-roll-and-cheek-rub-and-just-look-to-be-in-heavene2809d/

...so it is a genuine 'thing' but not necessarily Chanel - it's just one tiger they've noticed with a liking for it - but they could just use civetone.

A staff member has been killed :-(

from the Telegraph to counter his good efforts to preserve and breed the animals:

But these triumphs were overshadowed by the deaths of five keepers: two killed by the same tigress in 1980; one crushed by an elephant in 1984; another savaged by a tiger in 1994; and the last trampled by an elephant earlier this year. There were also occasional maulings: of the 12-year-old Robin Birley in 1970; of the model Merilyn Lamb in 1969; of a volunteer at Port Lympne in 1994.
Though Aspinall succeeded in warding off attempts by the Canterbury Council to enforce more orthodox methods of husbandry at Howletts, these accidents evoked criticism which portrayed him as a playboy living out his fantasies. Such attacks were the more virulent because of the provocative manner in which Apsinall set forth his own views. In his mind there had once been a golden age in which animals and humans had been equal. Mankind, though, had launched a vicious campaign against the beasts and Aspinall saw it as a duty to fight for the victims.
He castigated the human race as a species of vermin, and positively welcomed natural disasters as a means of reducing the plague of homo sapiens. He would gladly end his own life, he declared, if he could take another 250 million with him. There was something to be said, he felt, for Hitler's ideas about eugenics. "Broadly speaking," he said, "the high income groups tend to have a better genetic inheritance."



Nothing like embracing disasters to reduce the human population, not how to make friends and influence people.

In my opinion he was a very flawed individual.

From the Guardian:
Those in the "anti" lobby, who regarded James Bond's melodrama villains, Goldfinger and Dr No, as realistic characters in comparison, pointed to Aspinall's catalogue of beliefs - that the world's population would be better if culled by 2bn of the less intelligent; that Hitler was right about eugenics (though wrong about other matters); that everyone should feel himself to be a member of a tribe that was better than any other; that instinct and prejudice were more reliable guides to behaviour than reason; that, as a worshipper of the natural world, he worshipped earthquakes and plagues; and that he would glady sacrifice the life of his own children to save an endangered species.

Exactly Maggie, no matter the title of the newspaper you refer to he was still a very flawed man.

...and clearly thought himself 'better' than many :-|

Marwell was set up, in 1972. It is one of the earliest zoos in Europe to place an emphasis on animal conservation.
Their logo is the Scimitar horned Oryx. A pair of these, and a pair of Arabian Oryx were the first animals at the zoo, brought from Riyadh Zoo - an event organised by my dad.
Riyadh Zoo has a bad record when it comes to breeding endangered species - but, like Howletts, it wasn't set up for that.
No-one has ever been killed at Marwell, despite it having 1,200 animals, compared to Howletts 450+.

I wonder why.

Having met the late John Knowles, and his daughters, he was a very nice man. Realistic, honest, with a genuine love of animals and very appreciative of my dad's help to start setting up the Zoo.
In reality, once one zoo had donated, others would follow. It was also one of the first zoos to have large enclosures, rather than cages - something my dad relished.

Oh yes, I've got in a cage with a lion (my avatar) and stroked it. He wasn't 'tame' - but he had bonded with my dad, as the photo shows. Dad regularly tickled his tummy - and I was a bolshie 17 year old! Stroking his mane and face was enough for me - the vibration of his purr was incredible!
I also played ball with a cheetah cub who kept bothering me while I was trying to read a book - while it's mother and brother were within sight. I believed the mother was tied up - she wasn't :-S :-S
Dad regularly brought cheetahs home when he lived in Riyadh - to give them some exercise and stimulus. I assumed he'd tied the mother up to a hook in the wall - he hadn't - he'd put her lead over a bamboo stick flower support :-|

I'm talking about the 1970's Rollo, when King Faisal was in power - it was a totally different place to what it is now. ISIS didn't exist.
If you're going down that route - Britain was a bit sh*t in Medieval times.

Oh, so Aspinall 'wound up' how many reporters would you say - and how many policemen? All 'taken in' by his 'whacky' sense of humour and entitlement.
Hitler was (apparently) very enigmatic. Doesn't make him either pleasant or a nice person.

I don't understand your comment: 'the core problem of the planet is extreme overpopulation by h.s.' What is h.s.? Herbaceous shrubs? Hairy snakes?
Is everyone meant to be on your thought level?

If you want to write anything understandable, you should realise that not everyone (thankfully) lives in your abbreviations, neither do they feel they should take the time to work out what you mean - life's too short. If you can't be bothered to write out a word/phrase in full -don't use it!

Who is Mw? :-\

Also, why do you have to be so childish when your bull is 'topped'?

Just stop writing opinions as 'facts' and accept that you aren't the only person with 'interesting' and 'illustrious' ancestors/friends/experiences.

Please explain what you mean by h.s and now Foo?

I detest acronyms. Spent my last job constantly looking them up.
I took the time to look up h.s and Foo.

All I've found for h.s. is: Latin:hora somni - at bedtime or half strength
Foo: An term used for unimportant variables in programming when the programmer is too lazy to think of an actual name. The origin of such word is described in detail in RFC 3092.

Doesn't really make sense.

:-S

Foo is what his mum calls him.

Was it Howletts zoo that returned their gorillas to the wild where they were killed?

Yes, they were the first 'family' of 11 that were released on a place called Gorilla Island.
Five were killed - possibly by another adult male gorilla.
They've successfully released 80 others but not as a family.

Releasing them singly allows them to integrate into other troops.

I suppose, one of the problems of releasing a family, is that other male gorillas will be interested in the females, who wouldn't be interested in leaving the troop they belong to.

"Mw just give it a break I am not interested in your posts which always end up being about you and yr outsize chip on the shoulder. Foo."

Yeah Maggie there's nothing worse than someone always making any thread all about them and their own "experiences"

:-D :-D

Ha! Ha!
Had to laugh at that, Caroline, talk about pot - kettle - black! :-D :-D :-D

I still want Rollo to tell me what he means by Foo! :-D

Otherwise, I may have to explain what I think - and I may be very, very wrong, or (unfortunately) right! :-D :-D :-D

I think you'll find, as I stated before, had you bothered to read what others say, that
Damian Aspinall had successfully released 80 gorillas up to 2014.

It was only when he tried to release an established troop that problems happened.

So 'stating' that his releases (and it's Damian, not John - remember, John's dead)
don't work, is a fallacy.

It's here, as you probably won't believe me:
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury/news/five-gorillas-raised-in-kent-23035/

Still waiting for you to explain Foo :-\

As you've deleted the thread about Polls, Rollo, and refuse to explain what you mean by Foo, perhaps I should
These are just two possibilities.
A shortening of a vulgar term used in some 'bastions of high society and 'class' (ie public schools) that I believe you attended, towards someone of the 'lower' classes (ie 'oiks')

Or, a slang shortening of a French word - again a vulgar term, that ends in -truh

Neither of these? Then please, do tell :-D

Maybe he realised he was in a hole and stopped digging....and then deleted.

It is annoying deleting a thread for no good reason.