Sheep buddies for lonely jumbo
THE TWO SPECIES ARE COMPANIONABLE Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, unique, quirky or something or someone we might have no idea about, although we live here. This week she visits Lammie.
They haven’t met yet. This fresh morning Lammie extends her trunk over the moat to sense what and who’s new. Heather is and probably me, if elephants forget.
Kinkel was a rather aggressive companion to Lammie, but she grieved after his recent death, an animal behaviourist “counselling” the African she-elephant said.
The elephant keeper, Alice, says Lammie seems to have relaxed lately, perhaps because she doesn’t need to be so wary. She was born in the Joburg Zoo.
Now Lammie is on an enrichment programme to make her days active and interesting. Soon she will have woolly company.
Lammie unhooks a food puzzle. Candice, the enrichment officer, and Alice have hung and hidden all kinds of mindbenders for her. The air is wild with the wolf-whistles of gibbons. Lammie performs a balletic three-legged arabesque, then continues dismantling a puzzle, having discerned that breaking it apart makes the fruit and herbs in it accessible. Thankfully, elephants aren’t being introduced to zoos, but that means Lammie is unlikely to have a companion. It’s unthinkable to release her into the wild and unkind to release her into a protected area such as at Bela Bela. Instead, from there, renowned elephant-man Sean Hensman is Lammie’s champion.
The life expectancy of elephants in captivity is 30 to 40 years. Kinkel was 35 when he died and Lammie is 39. Wild elephants can live 20 to 30 years longer. The stress of moving Lammie now has been a big consideration. This is where the sheep come in. Oddly, elephants and sheep often seek each other out as companions. In the farmyard part of the zoo we meet the two sheep selected.
Going round the back to Lammie’s enclosure, Candice implores us not to turn our backs on Lammie because it’s the sign that she’s done something wrong.
Joburg’s elephant is there, receiving visitors with trunk-tohand politesse. The reserve pen for her ovine companions is within sniffing distance of her gate.
It’s a last touch from Lammie before I leave feeling a little emotional.
Elephants somehow do that. Sheep, slightly less.