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welcome to mutual of Omaha's Wild
Kingdom
in 1985 wild animal sanctuary director
pat Craig we've done one of the original
Wild Kingdom episodes i sat down with
Pat to talk about his experience do you
remember every Sunday sitting down with
oh yeah yeah
I don't know anybody my age that doesn't
remember sitting down unless you live
somewhere some other country if you were
in the United States and you were my age
as a kid you were probably sitting in
front of TV and watching me Joe of Omaha
for sure
facing the approach of winter one that I
was involved in was called the bears of
Sugarloaf Mountain in fact it took an
amazing amount of effort just to get to
where it was filmed at it is later on
and there was an exhilarating Christmas
in the air I was there as kind of a
helper advisor with wildlife and animals
and I was still very early in my career
something I wasn't planning on didn't
know I was gonna be there and it was
fine it was it was a lot of fun for me
and it definitely inspired me even
further to appreciate what the animals
needed and there was the early part of
me understanding what I wanted to do for
the sanctuary itself give the animals
that same kind of freedom so you
remember the story like yeah absolutely
it was about a couple of bears with a
mom in between the whole exhilaration
that we're just trying to figure out how
to go into hibernation is first time
they're away from their mom and twin
two-year-old black bears or recently put
on their own by their mother it's really
about them and their normal progression
from summer to fall and into going into
winter and to get ready for hibernation
they were pretty comical cuz they were
young and pretty much all they wanted to
do was horse around run and play and eat
and do what bears do bears are bears so
their idea of fun is to run around and
grab anything and so they wouldn't think
it would be great to run over and grab a
camera and throw it in the air and jump
on it and drag it off definitely
rambunctious they would get into a lots
of trouble and there was one scene where
the female mat lion came up behind one
of the bears who was sidetracked
generally don't like anybody coming up
behind him and just like people this
bear was totally engrossed in something
and the mountain lion just happened to
come up behind him and basically just
reached out to sniff him
touched some hair on his rear end and
the pictures absolutely flew around and
freaked out and just like and which
freaked out the mountain lion and they
already went tearing off in opposite
directions and it was pretty hilarious
to watch it wasn't an aggressive thing
it was just totally the reaction of them
of the two of them and it was pretty
funny too to see something that just
unfolded more naturally like that a
large book wounded by a hunter many
miles away in the lowlands Badgers are
gruff sounding and can take on and hold
their own with anybody they're in
formidable animal and the Badger
definitely wanted to make sure that
everybody knew that you can do whatever
you want to do but don't mess with my
stuff and don't mess with me we have a
lot of character not afraid of anything
that was one of the things that's pretty
amazing to watch is that little animal
like a Wolverine or a badger is just
tough there's anything out there they
could take on anything and so he had a
pretty good character of wanting to make
his presence known and tell everybody to
leave Malone before they even thought
about it so he was pretty funny did you
find that that episode was quite
educational like did it teach about
ecology and how all these animals were
connected yeah that was probably the
most amazing part of the whole thing was
just out there you're filming the
animals doing what animals do and out of
that came this great story about how
these bears had to get ready for
hibernation and all the other animals
and what they do to survive in that same
type of area and they have to share a
common space and appreciated the fact
that really did tell people a lot about
bears and a lot about mat lines and all
the things that happened so that they
were more educated and there really
wasn't any access to any information
like that other than that show at the
time and that was really great
for me it was more that I was inspired
that was something that I loved in a had
a passion for and as far as thinking I
would do the sanctuary at the time I had
already started it just needed to know
that there was it was a good life for
those animals and now you have an
extremely successful sanctuary where two
hundred thousand people visit every
single year you know they might be just
as equally inspired to to help out
wildlife in their own way well that's
what we hope to I mean that's the only
reason we're open to the public is
educate people same way just to make
sure that they come here and learn about
what's going on and hopefully they get
inspired to do something to it who knew
30-some years later we'd be working
together yeah it definitely didn't know
this is gonna be happening for me so I'm
honored to be here with you so thank you
so much for chatting with us and sharing
some memories
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