They say that elephants never forget. I hope we never forget the elephants.

The Elephants

I'll never forget the first time ever we went to the circus. It was magical and full of mystery. Andrew was four years old, and unlike my dad, when Greg told him we were going to the circus, we didn’t just drive by a one-ring circus in the Safeway parking lot. We went to the Tacoma Dome with Andrew’s grandparents to see the Barnum and Bailey, Ringling Bros. in three rings with trapeze artists, clowns, and trained elephants parading, dancing, and standing on their hind legs. It was life altering.

Last night, I watched two stories about elephants. The first was in the program called “Nature” on PBS. It was about elephants brought to North America 50, 60, or more years ago from the wilds of Africa and Thailand. The second was a home video of Andrew talking about the elephants he’d seen at the circus. We’d dug up the tape to show to now seventeen-year-old Andrew and his girlfriend. What a juxtaposition of emotions. I cried tears of grief and sadness for the elephants when watching their story. Later, I cried tears of joy watching Andrew’s video.

On “Nature” they told the stories of elephants living a dark life of solitude. These are elephants like Jenny and Linda, who were brought against their will to live, work and perform away from their beloved herd. They finally each adjusted to life on the road, learned the routine of setting up and taking down the big tents, and became like a herd to each other. That is, until circumstances tore them apart. The circus was loaded on a ship crossing the Great Lakes when it went down in icy waters. Linda was rescued and finally taken in by a zoo in the southern U.S. It was a poor zoo and they could barely afford to keep Linda, much less bring in other elephants to breed or even be companions. She lived by herself. Her handler spent his whole day with her, talking, bathing, and feeding her. Twenty years later, she was still physically active, but despondent and lethargic. Her handler found her a new home when the zoo decided that even one elephant was too expensive to keep. She was moved to an elephant orphanage in the Tennessee countryside. Linda and the other elephants are allowed to roam the 160-acre ranch at their leisure, returning to the open barn whenever they wish. Although she would later run free, Linda spent her first night in a holding area of the barn. All night long she mashed herself next to the bars in order to rumble, roar, and entwine trunks with a long last friend. Jenny had been but four years old when she and Linda were separated by the boat accident. After two decades of life without seeing another elephant, she not only had a whole herd to play with, Linda had found a long lost friend. They are now inseparable.

I was deeply touched by the plight of these gentle giants, ripped from the bosom of their herds at a tender age. Then I watched the video of young Andrew talking about the circus to his grandma. His face lit up when he talked about the elephants. It reminded me of the time when we visited the elephants at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo on a rare low-traffic day. The usually huge crowds were gone and Andrew was able to touch the Asian elephants after their logging exhibition. He touched their tough skin and spiky hair. And the elephants touched him with their finger-like noses. In the video, Andrew told his grandma that he’d always remember the time we went to the circus because he’d see his “elephant” cup from the circus and it would remind him of what we saw.

The elephants living in North America, today not only need better living conditions, but also without aggressive breeding programs, the populations in zoos and circuses will become extinct. The native populations in Africa and Asia are losing their ecosystems at a dramatic pace. Even if we rounded up all the elephants and sent them home, there would be no home for them. Even the elephant logging teams are out of work. With nearly all of Thailand deforested, the government has decreed that they are no longer allowed to log.I just hope that there are still elephants left in the world when Andrew has a son he can take to the zoo or circus. I hope he comes home with the glow of seeing an animal of great strength and intelligence. I don’t know the answer, but the global impact of losing these species would be devastating. I hope we don’t get to the point of having to show our children what elephants used to look like as we display them stuffed beside now-extinct wooly mammoths.

© Copyright Susan Barton, July 2003.