baal eal 
personnel situation. The Government has not been hiring people, in fact 
they are trying to cut down on the number of people who are in Federal 
employment. We are authorized 244 employees and we have now 205. 
We are allowed only to hire back a few people as they retire or quit or 
whatever happens to them. This is reducing the Federal payroll by 
attrition. You understand I thorough believe in economies in govern- 
ment but economies everywhere except the Zoo. However, we seem to 
have to carry our share along with the other agencies, -- in fact I think 
we are carrying more than our share. These seem to be the facts of life 
and try as we may we have not been able to get this squared away or 
changed. This means that I should be sticking pretty close to home for 
awhile. The third thing that seems to be bothering us: you will recall 
that I wrote about the death of the three wildebeest that we tried to ship. 
We are being investigated by the Humane Society. I have been through 
these before, years ago on the live feeding of snakes, so I know what 
this can do te us. So I will have to be staying by the home fires to 
keep this little mess under control. On top of that I am having a little 
trouble with some of my key personnel, getting them adjusted into the 
organization. The more people I get, the bigger and better the organi- 
zation seems to get, the more work that I end up doing. I have teld you 
this in confidence, but that's the way it seems to go. 
Another little problem that we seem to have had creep up that we didn't 
have last year is that the District of Columbiais rather insistent that our 
budget be shouldered and paid for entirely by the Smithsonian Institution. 
For years we have been in this peculiar bind of having the District of 
Columbia support the Zoo and the Smithsonian Institution administer the 
Zoo. The city wants the monkey off its back in more ways than one, and 
so they are starting noises along this line. This ought to keep me busy for 
a short while. 
The bongo over at Abidjan on the Ivory Coast, which is a six-m<caths-old 
female and which I had planned to go over and take a look at and then 
trans-ship it to Germany for quarantine -- I will net be able to do this so 
lam sending Dr. Clinten Gray, our Veterinarian. He will probably spend 
about 10 days in the area and then come on back. Really, this West 
African female should go te Cleveland to pair up with Biff, who is a West 
African male, but he doesn't seem to be very sexually active himself se 
Iam not sure that he would do anything with her if he had her. This 
will give us both the East African and the West African form and should 
make the technical papers on the bongo coming out of the Zoo a little more 
complete. I had hoped to be able to do some range comparisons and look 
over the area in which this animal was captured and find out, if 1 can, what they 
are eating in that area. But due to numerous things I'll have to send Dr. 
Gray. I have one question for you: if we cannot get this animal 
quarantined in Germany and if there is a flight from the Ivory Coast to 
Nairobi, could the animal be imported from the Yuory Coast to Nairobi 
and taken through the quarantine period with your animals? It may be 
that the government of Kenya does not want any animals imported from the 
Ivory Coast, since I understand they have contagious pleuropneumonia in 
their cattle. I doubt if there is an airline from the Ivory Coast to Kenya 
that would take a 7-months-old bongo. The big hang-up with the Ivory 
Coast animal is getting it quarantined. Germany, apparently, is getting 
more stringent on their quarantine regulations. So it is just a thought 
