Dick Van Patten

If I was good each week, my father would take me to a different pet store each Saturday. I had a snake, horny toads, turtles, lizards, rabbits, guinea pigs... I kept my alligator in the bathtub until it got too big.

I've always said I've wanted to be around forever. I never wanted to be the latest, greatest thing. I want to be like Willie Nelson - touring when I'm 70. To do that, you can't be the latest, greatest thing because those things fizzle out.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.