Curious Louisville

Last month, the Kentucky Department of Education released an audit recommending the state take over Louisville’s public school system. Curious Louisville asked for your questions about the audit.

Shawn Carroll and Karen Rippy wanted to know if there had been other state-takeovers in Kentucky. And if so, how were they working out?

Ashlie Stevens talked to Kentucky Public Radio's Ryland Barton for the answer.

As part of Curious Derby, we’ve reported on horse safety, injuries and even deaths while racing.

But this caused Rob Harris from Louisville to wonder: "What happens to race horses once they retire, winners or not?"

WFPL’s Ashlie Stevens went to a farm that specifically houses older thoroughbreds to find out the answer:

When you watch the Kentucky Oaks tonight, look for a solid brown filly whose jockey is in orange and brown checkered silks. Her name is Chocolate Martini, and trainer Tom Amoss bought her at a claiming race. That got listener Elizabeth Jesse thinking.

"So my best friend, her name is Hayley Amoss, and her dad is a trainer, Tom Amoss," Elizabeth said. "And he claimed a horse that’s actually running in the Oaks. Her name is Chocolate Martini and they only paid 25,000 for her. So that kind of sparked my curiosity about if there’d ever been a claimer in the Derby."

Elizabeth asked Curious Louisville whether any claimed horses had run in the Derby, and what's the least expensive horse that has run. WFPL's Laura Ellis looked for an answer.

It’s 34 notes in the key of C -- no sharps, no flats. And it means the next race is about 10 minutes away. You know it as the Call to the Post. Listener Hannah Zimmerman wanted to know where it came from, so WFPL's Laura Ellis went looking for the answer.

During the most exciting two minutes in sports, a lot of people pay attention to the athleticism of the horses -- and with good reason. But have you ever wondered what type of physical conditioning it requires to guide and stay balanced on top of a 1000-pound racehorse?

As part of our Curious Derby series, WFPL health reporter Lisa Gillespie looked into how jockeys stay in shape for races, and how they heal after injuries.

Every horse racing fan remembers Eight Belles’ death, said Michael Blowen, the owner of Old Friends, a retirement farm for thoroughbreds. It happened in 2008, minutes after the filly had placed in the Kentucky Derby; she collapsed on the track after both her ankles broke.

In television coverage from the race, cameras zoomed in on veterinarian Dr. Larry Bramlage.

“They immediately euthanized her because there was no possible way to save her," Bramlage said after the race.

“But I’ll tell you,” said Blowen, “Nobody loved Eight Belles more than her trainer, Larry Jones. I was on the backside of Churchill Downs every morning that week, and he had that horse out grazing every day. He adored her, and no one was more broken up about what happened to Eight Belles.”

And Blowen himself loves horses, especially racehorses.

Old Friends is an expansive farm outside Georgetown — the kind with wide pastures and volunteers who hand-feed carrots to retired racehorses. Every morning Blowen visits 1997 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Silver Charm, yelling across the field, “Who’s the greatest horse in the world?”

He acknowledges that the entire industry hasn’t always taken all the precautions it could have to keep the horses safe — though things are getting better.

Two of our listeners, Mike Tarsa and Addison Cramer, wanted to know how often horses are injured or killed during thoroughbred races. And what’s being done to prevent it?

They asked Curious Louisville. So we called in our data reporter, Alexandra Kanik, to see if she could track down some numbers.

The perfect dress. An outrageous hat. A pair of killer heels -- and a pair of backup flip flops. Everyone knows what the Derby essentials are for women. But what about men?

Tyler Franklin wanted to know, what's up with men's Derby fashion? How did it evolve? WFPL's Ryan Van Velzer needed the answer too -- he's going to his first Derby this year and had NO idea what to wear.

Tyler and Ryan teamed up for this Derby edition of Curious Louisville.

During the first weekend in May, people from all over the world flock to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. But Fred Benz and his wife typically leave that weekend to avoid the rush of tourists.

Whenever they do, Benz notices how packed the tarmac at Louisville International Airport becomes, which led him to wonder how many planes fly into the city over the course of Derby weekend.

As part of Curious Derby -- a special series by the producers of Curious Louisville -- WFPL reporter Kyeland Jackson set out to find the answer:

When Donna Finnell was working downtown in the late 1970s, she spent a lot of lunch breaks walking around on the Belvedere. She especially liked to visit a small statue nestled in the landscaping there — a delicate bronze figure of the Greek god Pan. He was shown bending towards the ground, playing a flute.

Ashlie Stevens

Pan.

Eventually, she got a different job, and when she visited the Belvedere again years later, Pan was gone. So she asked Curious Louisville: What happened to it?

When I first saw this question, I thought it would be a relatively easy one to answer. A quick Google search revealed the Belvedere Pan statue, as seen in the photo above, had been created by Charlotte Price (and cast by Louisville’s Barney Bright).

LVA/Submitted

Charlotte Price and Louisville sculptor Ed Hamilton.

I pulled out the city’s directory of public art, scanned for “Pan” and “Price” — and that’s when the story became more complicated.

Check it out in the player above. You can also download this story, and subscribe to Curious Louisville wherever you get your podcasts.

Something missing from the landscaping in your neighborhood? Or is there something else you’ve always wondered about Louisville? Type it into the form below and you might be featured in a future edition of Curious Louisville, where you ask the questions and we help you find the answers.

We know that all dogs go to heaven, but what happens to the Louisville Zoo animals when they die?

This Curious Louisville question actually has a variety of answers — ranging from the zoo’s educational programs to a baby pool on the rooftop of a Bellarmine University science building.

Dr. Zoli Gymesi is the senior staff veterinarian at the Louisville Zoo.

“Let me start by saying that any time we lose a zoo animal, it’s a sad day,” Gymesi said. “But with any loss, we try to maximize what we can learn from their death.”

He said that the zoo has a strict set of procedures after an animal dies.

“We have a dedicated necropsy room, and in the necropsy room is where we would do post-mortem evaluations,” Gymesi said. “That’s gross dissection of the animal after it has passed, you usually get a good feel there, and then you harvest tissues that gets sent off to a veterinary pathologist for microscopic evaluation.”

At that point, there is a full pathologic evaluation of the animal — cause of death, what kind of issues it had, and what zoo staff can learn from the death.

“Hides and bones, sometimes we will save some of those remains to use in our educational programs,” Gymesi said. “After that, whatever remains of the animals will be cremated. In some cases where cremation is not practical, like with real megavertabrates — big animals — they might get buried on zoo grounds.”

Gymesi said the animal graves don’t have markers because it’s more about the staff members who had worked with the animals being able to pay their final respects or visit if they choose.

Creative Commons

Louisville Zoo entrance.

But sometimes the remains don’t stay on zoo grounds.

Gymesi said the zoo has working relationships with a number of researchers, universities and labs across the country; one example is Dr. David Porta at Bellarmine University.

“Dr Porta studies fracture biomechanics and bones,” Gymesi said. “Sometimes we will save limbs from animals that have passed and he will use that in his study.”

And this relationship is the basis for one of the biggest (or, ahem, tallest) campus legends to come from Bellarmine University: that a giraffe carcass somehow ended up stored on the rooftop of Pasteur Hall. By way of disclosure, I attended Bellarmine, which is where I first heard this story.

“At some point in the end of March 2004, a very large male giraffe passed away,” Porta said. “Keep in mind, this giraffe was in its 20s, which is very old. Out in the wild, a giraffe is going to slow down and some lion is going to take it out of circulation. In a zoo setting, these animals can survive much, much longer.”

And this means, Porta explained, they start to see the problems of old age.

“Such as hip issues,” Porta said. “When it finally passes away, I’m sure a lot of people were doing research on the animal. At some point they contacted me, and said if you’d like to get some of the bones for study … so we were very excited to do that.”

He continued: “And while there, they asked if I would like to take the pelvis. They were curious about the hip problems with this giraffe, so they were very kind and asked if I would like to help them look at the hips.”

Porta left the zoo that day with several giraffe limbs and a pelvis, which has a diameter of about three feet and weighs 100 pounds.

But there was a problem.

“This still had the skin on and the muscle tissue, so I had to ‘deflesh them’ is the term we use, to get at the bones so we could see what happened with the hips,” Porta said.

And he needed a way to do this that would be quick and relatively mess-free on campus.

“I bought a small wading pool and I had that placed on the roof of our science building,” said Porta. “We’ve got some really great physical plant folks here at Bellarmine that are really game for anything. Most of those guys know me, so when I approach them, they know it’s going to be something weird. Then we used one of the cranes to lift the pelvis up onto the roof and set it in that pool.”

Courtesy Bellarmine University

Pasteur Hall at Bellarmine University

With the help of the late spring sun and some flies, the ‘defleshing’ process was off to a good start, but then Dr. Porta got a call.

“Well, while the giraffe was decomposing, this got to be May and I had taken a little time off, I’d left town, and I got a call from our secretary and she said. ‘There’s a problem in the science building, there are flies coming in through the vents,” Porta said.

Evidently, Porta said, there was a stack vent on the roof that wasn’t fully sealed. Flies swarmed a summer class. A call was made to the university president’s office. The vent was capped and a few years later, the school got a new science building.

The story has grown in the 13 years that have passed; when I was a student, I heard a variation that there were multiple giraffes in several baby pools. A version that’s a little closer to the truth is told on campus tours and the story will be documented in an upcoming book of university history.

But as outlandish as the giraffe story is, Porta said he learned something very emotionally important from it when he took the bones back to the zoo after examining them.

“I have to tell you, the zoo has some amazing people over there,” Porta said. “They are really caring people, they work very hard. They develop relationships with these animals, and that was something I wasn’t aware of since I work mainly in a human arena.”

He continued: “When I took these bones back over to show what had happened in the hips, there was probably a dozen people there — zookeepers and various staff and I mean, they were silent when I walked in with these bones. To them, they were learning what happened to their friend.”

You can download this story, and be sure to subscribe to Curious Louisville wherever you get your podcasts.

Submit your own question at curiouslouisville.org.