Excerpt: 'Jungle Jack: My Wild Life'

Sept. 12, 2008 — -- One of "Good Morning America's" favorite guests, Jack Hanna, has just released a memoir called "Jungle Jack: My Wild Life," which chronicles more than five decades of his passion, devotion and love of animals.

"GMA" was the first national TV program to feature Hanna and his amazing animals. He was an instant hit, and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the chapter below, Hanna describes how he got started in TV, and he shares some of his favorite funniest moments from "GMA" and "Late Night With David Letterman."

Chapter 13: Lights, Camera, Animals!

All this television stuff started, unintentionally, after I got to Columbus. Seeing me in some colorful local news interviews, the producer of a cable talk show asked me if I'd host some animal episodes. As an opportunity to promote the zoo, I accepted.

My next stop on the local circuit was Hanna's Ark, a family-type show on WBNS (CBS) that featured my daughter Kathaleen and me as co-hosts. With her trademark pigtails, she was only eleven but stole the show every time. She took the job very seriously, learning not only her lines but mine as well, to help me when I would forget. And she was completely fearless with the animals. She never flinched when a huge, black, hairy tarantula was placed on her arm, or when she was filming five feet from a spitting cobra. At Sea World one of the segments we filmed was the water skiing show. While one of the performers was skiing, he held Kathaleen who then climbed on top of his shoulders. Suzi said the ballet lessons paid off —she even pointed her toes! Though she certainly had her share of scratches and bites, she never said a word about it. We would open with an animal at the zoo, then go to footage of the same species in the wild, then come back and close from the zoo. I loved the concept, and it was fun while it lasted.

After two years and forty-eight episodes, Hanna's Ark was shelved. I was somewhat upset at the time, since the station announced that we didn't have enough animals to tie in to the wild because we were a small zoo. Tell the people that Hee Haw was creeping up on us—which it was—but don't tell me, a zoo director with some six thousand animals, that we don't have enough animals left.

But ending Hanna's Ark turned out to be a blessing. Shortly afterward, Channel 4, the local NBC affiliate, offered me a series of one-hour wildlife specials. These shows enabled me to learn (as I taught) about wild animals at the farthest reaches of the earth. We covered Egypt, East Africa, China, India, the Galápagos Islands, Alaska, Antarctica—you name it. And the result was an avalanche of invaluable publicity for the zoo.

A special bonus to our agreement was a small weekly bit every Friday called Zoo Day. I'd take an animal to the studio, or a crew came to us, and we just talked about what was going on at the zoo. It was a fantastic weekend reminder.

Angela Pace, the anchorperson for my first five years of Zoo Days, was, at the beginning, deadly opposed to the segment—she thought it had no place on a serious newscast. But we hit it off so well and had so many good times together that it did not take long for her to come around.

Our greatest Zoo Day segment ever was the one on which Betty White, my favorite camel, let out what sounded like a torrential downpour splashing down on the studio floor—something like when you've got a broken gutter in a thunderstorm. It was way too loud to ignore, so I just interrupted my spiel on what the camel ate and said, "Guess what, Angela? Betty's going to the bathroom."

Angela, meanwhile, was trying to step out of the camel's way. And I figured we'd better get Betty off, so I went to pull her with the rope, but she slipped in her own urine and ended up knocking me and Angela down. Next, I brought out a few little goats to promote spring fever at our Children's Zoo. I guess they must have all just eaten, because when they got to the same spot, they all started going to the bathroom, too. By now, I was laughing so hard I was crying; Angela was trying hard to maintain her composure.

"Let's have one more look at Betty White," I said to Angela.

"No, uh . . . Jack, I don't think we have time," said Angela, just as Betty came storming back in, butting Angela out of her way, sending her flying to the floor again. In one split second, ol' Betty was in and out of the frame.

As Angela attempted to pick herself up off the floor to sign off, I went to grab Betty White, who was now standing in a corner of the studio. In traditional camel fashion, she wouldn't budge. The last thing the viewer saw was me tugging on that camel, with the picture jumping up and down from the cameraman laughing so hard.

Why anyone would look at that tape and still invite me into their studio, I have no idea. But soon to follow was my big start on national television. In 1983, Patty Neger, associate producer from ABC's Good Morning America called. She had seen on the AP wire service a story about twin gorillas being born here in Columbus. She asked if they could do a live remote with me from the zoo, and I said fine. It all went off very smoothly, but I have to say it's hard to miss with a couple of twin baby gorillas.

"I was the first person to put Jack on national television. . . . You can blame it all on me." —Patty Neger, Coordinating Producer, Good Morning America

A year later Patty checked in on us again with the idea of doing a birthday party for the twins. We had a birthday cake, the whole bit, and by this time the twins were total hams. They were all over me, pulling my earphone out and chewing my safari shirt. The GMA people liked it, and Patty told me to call her if there were any more significant births happening at the zoo.

The following spring, while in New York on some other business, I told Patty about Taj, the white tiger cub born to yellow parents that Suzi was raising at home because of the cub's leg disability. Patty said they had a last-minute opening and asked if I could get Taj to New York immediately. Suzi wasn't home, but the GMA people somehow managed to track her down—before I did—on the golf course during Jack Nicklaus's Memorial Tournament. Hours later, Suzi and Taj were on their way to New York City. Suzi carried Taj with her in a crate, and on the plane, Taj received star treatment. The pilot welcomed the "white tiger cub," as Taj's boarding pass was registered, to the plane, and the man sitting beside Suzi asked her for Taj's boarding pass. "My wife will never believe I sat next to a tiger cub on the plane," he told her. The next morning, Taj joined me for my first Good Morning America studio appearance with Joan Lunden. And boy, did she "awww" them!

My next appearance was again in the studio, with two lion cubs and a sandhill crane. Kathleen Sullivan was the host and that crane was flapping its huge wings so much that Kathleen's hair was blowing like she was in a wind tunnel. The cubs were crawling all over my lap, and I just went on with the interview as though nothing was happening.

What I was going through was nothing compared to Debbie Casto's ordeal the night before. Debbie, our marketing director at the time, had just been kicked out of the Plaza Athénée Hotel. Around ten o'clock, she had taken one of the lion cubs for a walk on the marble floor of the hotel's foyer, and somebody got uptight. Debbie wound up sleeping in the manager's office on a cot with the two cubs.

Anyway, that particular show cemented Good Morning America's relationship with the Columbus Zoo. Producer Sonya Selby-Wright suggested having me appear on a monthly basis, and at the same time GMA officially "adopted" the Columbus Zoo with the twins' second birthday party. An aardvark and a couple of baby wallabies were presented on the air to hosts David Hartman and Joan Lunden, with the understanding that GMA would adopt them, which includes the cost of feeding the animals for a year.

"Every single time Jack was going to be on, I'd come home and say to my kids, 'Guess who's going to be on next Thursday?' They would yell, 'Jack Hanna!' Jack was the guest, the star that they always wanted to see." —Joan Lunden

For the first segment under the new arrangement, Joan Lunden traveled out to the zoo. We greeted her at the front gate with a welcoming committee that looked like a Noah's Ark with zookeepers. Joan loves animals, and aside from an embarrassing moment when Oscar the gorilla disrespectfully nailed her with his infamous crap toss, she had a great time touring the zoo.