Fatso & Friend

A Memory of Dudley.

It was 1970 before I found myself working in this enclosure with 'Fatso' the male lion and his mate, whose name I, unfortunately, cannot remember. I began working at Dudley zoo in 1970 as the Giraffe Keeper and was moved to the 'Cat Round' some three months later. I was responsible for the care of the lion and tiger enclosures, which were large pits as illustrated, a by-product of the open cast mining that had taken place there. The bears were housed in similar, if somewhat larger, ravines.
I left Dudley Zoo in 1971, but continued to work as a zoo keeper until my early retirement in 2003 in Australia. But, Dudley was my first and I remember my first encounters with the big cats very clearly....