Like the bison field, the inside of the elephant enclosure is larger than it first appears. When you see two big elephants in it, it seems small, but when it has only two humans? Huge. When he closes the elephant-sized doors to the outside, I’m reminded of the movie King Kong.
When the cleaning inside began, and I saw the size of their pile, I understood why we were carrying ten trash cans.
“Some of their droppings have hay on them,” I remarked. And the height and emptiness of the room carry my echo.
Matt smiled back. “Yeah, they don’t digest all the food. Strange, he replied.
“But it’s still too heavy,” I said, trying to shovel a pile of trash into the nearest trash can.
After we shoveled every last piece of trash out of the elephant cage, Matt pulled out the fire hose and cleared the floor. Then we took the bleach mixture, pushed the broom, and scrubbed every inch of the floor, a process that took at least 30 minutes.
Matt let me wash it off when he finished the internal transfer area—the second part of their indoor enclosure used to house elephants when they needed to be moved from the main area but couldn’t get out—for example as in the case of inclement weather.
Once the inside was clean, Matt opened the King Kong door to let the elephants go inside, and I ran into the waiting room to get a bucket of food for them. Matt grabbed each bucket of pellets and dumped them in separate places on either side of the room, then as the girls approached his food, he chained their ankles.
He saw my expression and said, “It’s only temporary. They need to be kept apart while eating so we know exactly what each will get.”
Then he took lemons out of each box of vegetables and said, “Look at this,” and tossed Mary and Heidi a lemon each. We both laughed like crazy at the looks on their faces as they took a bite of our sour lemon.
Then I said, “Awww, I feel bad,” but I couldn’t stop giggling. Once I get the giggles, they just run their course.
“It’s okay, they like them!” he said, also smiling. And when he threw two more, I could see that it was true, bitter or not, they seemed to like them. He dumped the remains of buckets of fruit and vegetables into their piles of food, and we left them alone.
* * *
After loading ten full trash cans into the back of the truck, we drove back to the main gate. This time after driving past, Matt backed up the truck next to the giant trash can. He instructed me to sit with him in the back of the truck because the bins were so heavy that it took two people to lift them and turn them upside down. Then we go to
kitchen to rest.
Now I feel comfortable hanging out with the managers and other volunteers around the break room table, and the topic of conversation is the Ringling Brothers. The circus is coming to town and the keepers are discussing whether or not they should go.
“I don’t give them my money. They shouldn’t make animals do things like that. That’s not natural,” Monica said, and there were whispers of approval around the table. This is the first time I’ve heard people talk about the circus worrying about the treatment of animals, and I’m really interested in what the curators think about it.
Matt said, “I need to check on their Asian elephants, I want to see what they’re doing with them.”
“They would never get an African elephant to do those tricks,” Sherry said.
I was still figuring out the difference between the two so I hesitantly asked, “Why not?” and then my face turned red as some of the goalkeepers giggled.
Matt explains, “Asian elephants are more tame. Our girls are wild! And I can tell that he approves of their wildness, perhaps seeing them as like-minded souls.
Monica rolled her eyes at him and then turned to me and added: “If you see an elephant in the circus, chances are it’s female and most likely Asian. They are easier to manage.” Then she turned to Matt, “But there are African elephants in the circus, that’s Jumbo – and males too!”
“You mean cartoons?” Matt smirked.
“It’s not stupid, it’s Dumbo,” Monica replied.
“Well, I’ll go anyway,” Matt replied and crossed his arms. “You could say I wanted to see what kind of hoop they were getting their elephants to jump through.”
One of the other goalkeepers, I think her name is Jody, turned to Matt. “You’ll have to track them down for us and report back,” she winked.
This is just an excerpt – to read the rest please see my book, The Age of Spider Monkeys: And Other Revelations From Behind the Zoo.
Photo taken by the author of the book while volunteering at the zoo in the 1980s.
