Mr. John Seago -2- 
medical problem. Everything is working out the way it should; 
it's all under control; and there is nothing to worry about. 
The “naked ape“ being the creature he is, does not believe this. 
He writes letters to his Congressman and objects to having the 
skin test being done in the Lion House. The "naked ape" does 
not wish to have a skin test of a chest X-ray done on company 
time; he thinks he should draw overtime for this service to 
protect his own health. The “naked ape“ has a mate that writes 
letters to Congressmen accusing the Zoo of infecting her husband, 
etc, etc., and demanding all sorts of interesting things. The 
Congressmen then write letters to the “naked director” and he 
has to spend hours and hours drafting and redrafting answers to 
all sorts of questions. If it were not for the human angle, I 
am quite sure this whole shooting match would be over quite 
readily. 
We've had several zoo-wide meetings trying to explain to our 
keepers and other employees what the problem is and what is being 
done. In actual fact, our employees are just like the apes, and _ 
they are showing up with a skin reaction which neither we nor they 
can prove that they did or did not get it at the Zoo. We know 
that 50% of the residents of the urban inner city in Washington, 
which is the polite way of saying the poor people confined to 
the ghettos, have a skin reaction at age forty. The Zoo's per- 
centage of skin reactions is running about 32 to 33 percent. 
The next step in this procedure is that I'll have to do an analysis 
of the social and ethnic background of the employees of the Zoo. 
This isn't going to really prove anything, except that some people 
like to receive reports. Please understand that I am not the | 
enly one involved in this--John Perry, Werren Iliff, our personnel 
people, as well as senior members of the Animal Department, are 
all running around in circles. The man to really feel sorry for 
is our poor veterinarian because he is trying to placate both 
the animals and the people, and this ain't easy. Tle next install- 
ment will occur in January when we re<-test the animals. Incidentally, 
all the monkeys were tested and they are all negative. In fact, 
we have not seen but two tubercular cases in or monkeys in the 
past fifteen years. Enough of this problem for the present time. 
Our little friend, Desmond Morris, as you may have heard, wrote 
an article in LIFE magazine concerning the shame of the zoos and 
titled this “The Naked Cage.“ I'm enclosing a copy in case you 
