New book reveals Hanna’s wild life

The director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo allows viewers to look behind the scenes at what goes into his TV appearances.

By DOUG WHITEMAN

Associated Press

“Jungle Jack: My Wild Life” by Jack Hanna (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 352 pp. hardcover, $25.99)

COLUMBUS — David Letterman’s producers like it when Jack Hanna’s zoo animals run amok on the show because it’s good for laughs.

What viewers don’t see is the behind-the-scenes preparation that has gone into 25 years of television appearances, recounted in Hanna’s new autobiography, “Jungle Jack: My Wild Life.”

There was the time Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo, took two camels on Letterman’s old NBC show. The dromedaries’ humps destroyed lights and ceiling tiles in a corridor leading to the Rockefeller Center studio because Hanna neglected to measure how high the animals stood.

“Are you kidding me? I never would have thought of that in a million years. Measure a camel?” asked Hanna during a recent interview at Columbus Zoo. Then, he added: “I guess I should have thought of it though.”

The building manager threatened to bill Hanna $5,000 for the damage, but the show’s head producer said not to worry about it.

Hanna, 61, said his appearances with TV hosts, from Larry King to Ellen DeGeneres, have allowed him to spread a message of conservation to a huge audience.

Animal rights activists have accused Hanna of exploiting animals and subjecting them to unnecessary stress by taking them on television. On its Web site, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals describes what he does as “pimping” wild animals.

“If you’re calling educating people over the last 30 years, hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, then I’ll be a wildlife pimp every day,” Hanna said.

The animals’ health and safety always comes first, and if an animal resists going out before the audience and under the studio lights, it’s not used, Hanna said.

Since his first shot on network TV — a 1983 appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that showed off a pair of twin baby gorillas born at the zoo — Hanna has grown accustomed to causing a stir with his four-legged fellow guests, both on and off camera.

Former “Good Morning America” co-host Joan Lunden remembers being captivated the first time he was on the show, which would go on to make the zookeeper a monthly regular. Lunden said she isn’t surprised that other programs decided they wanted him, too.

“Whenever he was on, you just knew that as people were walking across their bedrooms in the morning, they were stopping in front of the TV and calling their other family members, ’Look, look, look!”’ she said. “He has this sense of wonderment about creatures on this earth that’s infectious.”

In his book, Hanna writes that not everything goes as planned.

A beaver once bit Hanna on his left hand during a “Letterman” taping in New York. He got through the segment with the hand wrapped in paper towels and stuffed into a flesh-colored glove. He then walked several blocks to a hospital.

“Once there, people thought I was a shooting victim with blood spattered all over my clothes,” Hanna recounts in the book.

He and Letterman didn’t talk about the incident — the two have only known each other onstage.

“I’ve never talked to him before or after the show in 23 years,” Hanna said.