Elephant Speak: A Devoted Keeper’s Life Among the Herd by Melissa Crandall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Disclosure up front: I was primed to like this book. I had the wonderful opportunity in January 2018 to visit with Asian elephants in Oklahoma and get checked out in detail by a beautiful 63 year old Susie!
So when this popped up on Ooligan Press, I requested it immediately and was fortunate to be accepted. These are the stories of Roger Henneous and more importantly, the elephants in his life at the Oregon Zoo during his tenure from 1967 to 1997. Ms. Crandall writes an earthy selective diary of a man who is characterized as cantankerous, but so caring, and in many ways a visionary ahead of his times with respect to elephant care. The trials and losses, the joys of births and achievements, the quiet battles with powers above him, the frustrations at people who did not understand what he understood…it’s a candid snapshot of a rare life.
Before he became full time dedicated to the elephants, Roger worked wherever and whenever he was told around the entire zoo. “What he loved most was the constant variety in his tasks. Every day brought something new and interesting. It was impossible to be bored.” I can understand that – variety in the job is one reason I enjoy mine, and we have the buzz phrase “It’s never boring.” But we don’t work with elephants! And when he witnessed his first birth, “For the first time, he felt the wiry pelt of hair, the heat of its body, and the thrum of its mighty heart. His eyes stung with tears, and his throat closed with emotion.” There it is. I only had one, too brief encounter with several elephants, and I can tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve been kissed – okay, breathed on – by an elephant!
Roger learned from, and gives credit to, his predecessor Alvin Tucker who worked hard to see whatever problems arose from the elephants’ perspective, and preached
The primary Laws of Tucker:
• More can be achieved in this world with kindness than with brutality.
• Don’t try to out-muscle them because you’ll lose. Out- think them instead. Offer them a better deal.
• Be fair because elephants understand fair.
• Maintaining control is an exercise in intellect.
• Abuse is the lazy man’s solution to a problem.
Simple, yes? We know so much more about them now than then, and still know little.
Other selected highlights:
The staff had to be careful, because playing was not even ground
Elephants possess a refined sense of humor. They love to play and tease not only among themselves, but also with their keepers. Some were particularly adept at stealing tools from a distracted handler in order to initiate a game of keep-away. But even something as seemingly innocuous as a trunk swat could have real challenge behind it, considering the trunk of an adult elephant can weigh as much as 300 pounds.
Calves can gain between 22 and 44 pounds (10-20 kilograms) in body weight per month, but until recently, there was no substitute for mother’s milk.
Elephant milk appears thin, but it contains more sugar and less water and butterfat than the milk of a dairy cow. In fact, milk from dairy cows should never be used as a substitute for orphaned elephant calves because they’re unable to metabolize the high butterfat content. The dairy milk congeals in the calf ’s stomach as a pasty, semi-solid mass, and the calf literally starves to death while being fed. Formulas now exist to help keep orphaned elephant calves alive until they can begin to feed fully like an adult.
I did not know that about cow’s milk and elephants.
Too many times, the advice of Roger, who spent the most time with the elephants, was ignored…on management vs. caretaker: “Sometimes I was in charge and sometimes I wasn’t, and I never knew which it would be,” he said. “The best I could do was try to pick my fights carefully.”
Elephant socialization, and education, is poorly understood, but is is understood that it is vital. Cows learn to be mothers and midwives, bulls learn the way of things – how to be elephants. And there is more to be understood…
In the early 1980s, a group of teen- age male African elephants, survivors of a herd culling (killing) at Kruger National Park in South Africa, were relocated to Pilanesberg National Park, more than five hours away. In 1993, rangers at Pilanesberg discovered several of the park’s rhinos mutilated and killed. The rangers subsequently learned that without the presence of older, more experienced bulls to influence and teach them, the young male elephants — who were suffering the effects of PTSD brought on by the cull a decade earlier in which they witnessed their families being killed — were on rampage. These elephants entered full musth ten years earlier than normal, and also simultaneously, something never before documented. When adult males were eventually introduced to the area, the teenagers flocked to them and the killings stopped. This illustrates an important role older bulls play in elephant society beyond the breeding imperative: younger bulls need them as role models.
And there is hurt in the stories.
In 2012, poachers armed with grenades and AK-47s slaughtered more than three hundred elephants in a single day at Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon.
Someone even stole a tusk from an elephant that had died in the zoo! Roger and his team had the unpleasant but necessary task of dismembering the remains for easier disposal. Roger had set the tusks aside for the museum and someone with a key had taken one.
Ms. Crandall notes
Two elephant sanctuaries exist in the United States: one in Tennessee, the other in California. Both are privately owned and not open to the public. The elephants are segregated by sex if bulls and cows are present, and no breeding is allowed. According to Todd Montgomery, volunteer and outreach manager at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, their facility “does not support the breeding of elephants in captivity as there is no indication that these captive-born elephants will ever be part of a viable wild population.
While not of the same goal to return elephants to the wild, the Endangered Ark Foundation in Oklahoma provides a home to rescued Asian elephants.
Elephants are intelligent. Sometimes underestimated, that intelligence got the best of humans more than once.
In the late 60s, Pet and three other elephants had been involved in a study to determine visual acuity, dexterity, and intelligence. The test consisted of a slide projector and a custom-built box with a screen on either side of which was a large white button. The elephant was supposed to push the right-hand button when shown a white slide, and the left-hand button when shown a barred slide. The images were disclosed at random, with no discernible pattern the elephant might memorize. For each correct response, a sugar cube was delivered down a tube. Once twenty correct responses had been recorded, the trial ended for the day. Although some of the elephants struggled at first to master the test, all eventually succeeded.
The researchers returned in 1986 to test the elephants again and see if they remembered the study. Three of them scored twenty correct responses almost immediately, but Pet labored. She’d get twelve right and miss one, then she’d get fourteen right and make an error, never quite reaching the desired goal. The scientists looked on, one callously remarking that Pet was really stupid compared to the other elephants.
Standing nearby, Haight [another keeper] took issue with the comment and suggested the researcher look at it from the elephant’s perspective. Pet had clearly figured out that twenty correct answers brought an end to the sugar cubes. Playing the game her way, she scored far more treats than her supposedly smarter class- mates. The scientist realized he’d been superbly played and Pet received an extra sugar cube for being so smart.
On that frustration Henneous often experienced, one particular time a cow, Me-Tu, went into labor two months early and delivered a smaller than normal calf. Roger thought there might be another, but the vet, a Dr. Schmidt, disagreed. For one, the two chosen to midwife had divided their attention between the calf and the mother. who was in distress. “Roger telephoned Schmidt again to report the strange behavior and received the same response as before: there was nothing inside Me-Tu but placenta.” Twelve hours later, a stillborn calf was delivered…except…it blinked. Roger and the staff dragged the unresponsive calf into another room and tried CPR. Roger
dialed Schmidt’s home number. “You know that placenta you were so sure about?” he roared when the receiver lifted at the other end. “Well, it’s got a trunk and two eyes and if you move your goddamn ass you might even find her alive when you get here!”
Sadly, the calf died two hours later.
Oh, the arrogance of the “educated” – in this case, the vet – can be a challenge for the practical. A necroscopy revealed brain damage and a collapsed lung due to protracted labor. Schmidt’s unwillingness to consider the possibility of twins was a tragic error on his part and one that Roger never forgave.
Ms. Crandall does say that little probably could have been done, as C-sections on elephants are fatal. Sad, but the surviving twin, Rose-Tu, was full of spirit and humor.
And a funny one to lighten after that (though it was from early in the book)
A favorite joke among the keepers was this: What’s the difference between a cheap tavern and an elephant fart? One is a bar room and the other is a ba-ROOM!
We need more Rogers. And more elephants.
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