The life of elephants at the Toronto Zoo

Elephant Tessa can not be called a beauty, but that did not stop her from finding a way to her heart. Tessa is trying to figure out what she should do with her trunk. Eric Cole, her personal trainer, cook, nurse, companion and chief caretaker at the Toronto Zoo, asks her to just sound the horn — this exercise is a test for the presence of tuberculosis. The elephant sticks a trunk as thick as a loaf of bread between the steel bars of the cage and reaches out to Cole. A loud nasal sound is heard in the silence. Cole blows his whistle, releases his trunk, and gives the four-ton giantess some cauliflower as a reward. Cole then proceeds to her favorite procedure: taking pills. After the elephant opens its mouth, Cole throws pills into it, and another caretaker pours a sweet orange drink from a spray bottle. Tessa would do anything for him. She opens her mouth even wider, showing a whitish, dark-spotted tongue, and a large outgrowth hanging from the side. After receiving a portion of her favorite drink, Tessa closes her mouth, while a sound similar to the squelching of a rubber boot stuck in a swamp is heard. "Well done, Tessa," Cole praises her. Today she is beyond praise. We are standing at the Toronto Zoo near a large enclosure with African elephants. Tessa is one of the six elephants kept here. Elephants can rightfully be called giants both physically and intellectually: They are the largest land animals, and they can compete with great apes in intelligence. However, Tessa is an unusual elephant. In addition to the obvious mental retardation, she also has physical disabilities.

Her tusks are curved — the left one stuck out at an angle of almost 45 degrees until it broke off a few months ago. She has no hair on her tail. "She has sore eyes and oddly shaped ears," says Cole. — She has an unattractive appearance. But because she is so unusual, everyone feels sorry for her." Cole didn't always treat elephants with such awe. After working for many years in zoos in Ireland and Canada, he joined the Toronto Zoo in 1992. Talking to the head of the human resources department, he said that he was ready to work with any animals except elephants — working in an elephant sanctuary was considered dangerous. And yet, in 2000, one of the zoo employees persuaded him to work with these giants, explaining that this work pays off handsomely. And he decided to give it a try. Her colleague Vernon Presley says that although Cole denies this, he is a very gentle person at heart, especially when it comes to Tessa. A few years ago, when she was seriously ill and refused to eat, Cole sneaked into the food warehouse and secretly stole various fruits and vegetables from there: what if Tessa liked any of them? Presley thinks that Cole became attached to Tessa at a time when no one expected her to survive. In the early 70s, Toby Styles, an employee of the Toronto Zoo, went to Germany to receive a shipment of elephants there. Arriving at the scene, he found that one elephant was sick, weak and covered with ulcers. Stiles was afraid that the baby elephant would die during transportation to Canada. Many years have passed since then, Tessa has survived, but she has remained painful. Now she is 38 years old, but she has weak muscle tone, and if other elephants can lift and hold two or three pieces of pressed dry alfalfa with their trunks, then Tessa lifts only one. Tessa's feet seem to be eaten by a bug, and she has to have a pedicure twice as often as the rest of the elephants.

When the elephants are fed, each in their own enclosure, they are given small gray briquettes of compound feed. Tessa eats the longest because she has to push each briquette against the wall — only after that she manages to wrap her trunk around the briquette and then send it into her mouth. Tessa's experience of motherhood was also unsuccessful. Twenty years ago, she had a cub, he died after living only three days.
Periodically, Tessa's health deteriorated. She had a particularly severe attack in 2004, when she lost almost a ton of her weight in five days. Then the zoo staff took turns around the clock on duty around her. Cole remembers how, with a flashlight in his hands, he went to Tessa's pen every half hour and checked if she was okay. He never spares any time or effort for Tessa, because, as he says, "Old Tessa needs to be given more attention." In the last five years, Tessa has literally blossomed. Cole attributes this to the classes that are regularly held with elephants. Ten years ago, the Toronto Zoo refused to keep African elephants in free contact conditions, when employees worked next to elephants in enclosures with walls six meters high. Now people and animals are separated by a grid with bars, between which a person can freely pass, but an elephant cannot. This decision was made after one of the elephants almost trampled the caretaker, perhaps unintentionally, but it is known that elephants sometimes behave aggressively. During training, six elephants repeat the learned movements — these exercises will make it easier for them to endure various hygienic and medical procedures, such as daily washing and foot examination or X-ray examination. The elephant training continues, and another zoo worker, Matt Berridge, puts a stepladder next to Tessa.

At Cole's command, Tessa sticks her ear between the bars. While Cole treats Tessa, Berridge rinses her ear with warm water and pretends to take her blood for analysis. Working with Tessa, Cole and his colleagues use non-standard techniques. Other elephants receive a treat only after a blood test is allegedly taken, and Tessa is given a treat throughout the procedure. By executing the same command, Tessa can behave in different ways. She usually resists for a long time before putting her giant foot in the basin with antiseptic, but occasionally it happens that she gets her foot in the basin on the first attempt. At some point, Cole stops giving Tessa food, and she immediately stops doing the exercise. He calls her name affectionately, but she stands undecided. Then he begins to mimic in a hoarse voice: "I don't hear anything. I have the biggest ears in the world, and I can't hear anything." When Tessa regains her former position, Cole and Berridge break into a smile. At the end of the lesson, Tessa lifts her right hind leg to be washed and examined. She has to get a pedicure twice as often as the rest of the elephants. Her feet are speckled with black grooves, as if eaten by a sharpener bug. Cole showed ultrasound scans of her feet to zoologists, but no one had seen anything like it. Finally, the feet are washed, the lesson is over. Tessa gets some more cauliflower and carrots and steps aside. In captivity, various surprises can happen to wild animals. A few years ago, having decided to create a characteristic sound background for visitors, the zoo staff tried to play a recording made in the vast African savannah.

What was on the film, the distant roar of tigers or the harsh cries of birds, Cole does not remember exactly, but the elephants took it as a warning of danger. "They immediately started trumpeting,— says Cole. They raised their ears and stood in a circle, as elephants living in the wild do. Only Tessa continued to stand as she stood,"Cole doubts that she would have survived in the wild: the strongest survive, and Tessa is not one of those. Although African elephants live up to 40 years of age in captivity, this is quite small compared to their life expectancy in nature, where they live up to 60 years. In July 2006, the oldest elephant at the Toronto Zoo, 40-year-old Patsy, was euthanized after a long and painful illness. All the zoo staff caring for the elephants were surprised that Patsy had died before Tessa. "If we were asked which of the elephants, in our opinion, could get so seriously ill that it would have to be put down," says Cole, "we would all name Tessa." Ever since she was brought here, it seems to some that she is about to die. Cole is not the kind of person to talk about his love for Tessa in public, he prefers to trust his feelings on paper. His first collection of poems about the animals he cared for during his long service in zoos was published in 2005. He dedicated one of his poems to the elephant Tessa. After so many years spent together, after so many small victories and annoying failures, Cole looks at Tessa and sees what others do not see. "She is very obedient and diligent," he says. She's trying to do something until she can't. Then he smiles and adds, "She's extraordinary."

Source: According to the stories of John Mitchell "The Life of Elephants" Плануєте день у Хмельницькому? Знайте, яка буде погода - детальний прогноз .