OLD FRIENDS
Meet the facility’s seniors, lovingly cared for in comfy, authentic habitats
Meet the oldest animals at the Houston Zoo — including Cheyenne, a 47-year-old orangutan; Thai, a 54-year-old elephant; and Mr. Pickles, an 86-year-old tortoise.
The old-folks home for monkeys was clean. It was neat. The monkeys had excellent veterinary care, good food, even “room” decorations and the occasional birthday party. The problem? Though the stand-alone building at the Houston Zoo was oddly familiar to the people going in and out, it might as well have been Mars to the monkeys.
Today the facility is closed in pursuit of a singular goal — that all animals at the zoo, including the old and frail, live in realistic habitats that are comfortable and reminiscent of their ancestral homes. They get to mix it up with members of their own species and age in place.
“Our elderly animals teach us the value of all lives,” says Dr. Joe Flanagan, the zoo’s senior veterinarian. “They are still useful members of their groups. They are still themselves.”
It helps, of course, that the veterinary tools to manage the aches, pains and diseases common in old age have improved vastly in the past 30 years.
Charlie, an elderly chimpanzee, knows how to back up against a fence so that he can receive laser acupuncture for debilitating arthritis.
For Caesar, a colobus monkey, cataract surgery in his final years made the difference between him stumbling around his cage and swinging from tree branches.
“It almost brings tears to my eyes when I think how things have changed for the better,” Flanagan says. “I don’t want to anthropomorphize too much, but the older animals seem happy. They seem content.”
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Mr. Pickles, a radiated tortoise, is 86, the oldest animal at the zoo and almost 30 years past his expected expiration date.
“If I act half as lively as he does when I’m that age, I’ll be a very happy man, and my wife will be
happy, too,” senior keeper Chris Bednarski says.
The tortoise was born Nov. 21, 1932, in Madagascar, an island country off the southeast coast of Africa. Old records suggest that Mr. Pickles was shipped to a zoo in Switzerland, loaned to the Bronx Zoo then sent to Houston in 1987.
The tortoise will not be returning to either zoo, Bednarksi says.
“He’s our boy.”
Mr. Pickles weighs 28 pounds, and he eats hay, leaves and flowers. When Bednarksi is really trying to get his attention, he’ll bribe him with lettuce and sweet potatoes.
“It’s all about food
motivation,” Bednarski says. “If I go in there (the enclosure) with any kind of vegetation, they come running toward me.”
The radiated tortoise shares his living quarters with a second radiated tortoise (the 49-year-old female is known as Mrs. Pickles), three Galapagos tortoises and two spurthighed tortoises.
It’s the radiated tortoises — the ones with the shiny, black-and-gold shells and scaly, yellow legs — that own Bednarski’s heart. They are critically endangered; scientists predict they will be extinct in 15 to 20 years.
Part of the problem is that radiated tortoises produce few offspring despite their proclivity to mate. To Bednarski’s knowledge, Mr. Pickles has fathered only one baby during the 32 years he’s been in Houston. When the little tortoise was spotted scampering around the exhibit in 1997, he was named Fluke.
Also, deforestation and population growth, the pet trade and poverty have made the tortoises’ native home in Madagascar a hostile environment. When the people there have nothing else to eat, they hunt the reptiles.
“Who wants to live in a world without turtles and tortoises?” Bednarksi asks. “They’re great at seed dispersal, and they help clean up waterways. They’re good janitors of the wild.”
Whether it’s his advanced age or prehistoric good looks, Mr. Pickles is a popular zoo attraction.
“We can learn a lot from him,” Bednarski says. “Take it easy. Don’t stress out about stuff. Being vegetarian doesn’t hurt either.”
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It was the 3 a.m. phone call Daryl Hoffman had been dreading.
Thai, the zoo’s 54-yearold elephant, was lying on his side in the outdoor enclosure, and he wasn’t moving.
Methai, Thai’s 50-yearold elephant friend, was standing over him protectively.
Hoffman, curator for large mammals, scrambled into his work clothes and made the 45-minute trip from north Houston to the zoo. When he arrived, he had one thought: Please, let Thai be asleep, not dead.
Hoffman called his name. “Thai! Thailand!”
Frightened, Thai jumped to his feet.
The elephant expert
laughs at the story now.
“With these big old males, it (death and dying) definitely crosses your mind. It’s a story anyone with an older animal can relate to.”
The average life expectancy for Asian elephants is 45 years. Thai and Methai, who were born in Thailand and sent to the Houston Zoo in the 1980s, are living their bonus years.
Thai, the biggest, most majestic elephant on campus, weighs more than 11,000 pounds. Like other males of his species, he is fairly solitary and only moves into a herd of females to mate. Still, he does enjoy some limited time with the family.
“He’s good around his kids,” says Rob Bernardy, the zoo’s elephant manager. “But it’s debatable if he knows that the 3- or 4year-old kicking him in the shins is his.”
Thai, who moves like a 30-year-old, needs only a few concessions to age. Elephants have six sets of four teeth, and he’s been down to his last set for about 20 years. To help him, his keepers feed him hay that is chipped or pre-shredded.
Among the 10 elephants at the zoo, Thai is the oldest, but Methai is the matriarch, boss and disciplinarian. She’s also, unfortunately, showing her age.
“She doesn’t do anything fast,” Bernardy says. “To watch Methai, you’d think she was 90.”
Her main problem is osteoarthritis. To ease her pain, her caretakers make large sand piles so that she can rest against them and get up and down more easily. Also, they soak her feet. They soak Thai’s feet, too, but they call Methai’s treatments pedicures.
“What don’t we do for Methai?” Hoffman asks comically. “She’s an old lady who is spoiled rotten.”
Never mind that he is the one who spoils her.
“Methai’s very tactile,” Hoffman says. “She likes to be rubbed. She likes her feet rubbed. She likes her tail rubbed. “What a sweetheart.”
Sometimes people tell Hoffman they wish the elephants could return to Thailand and be free. They’d never survive in the wild, he says.
“This (zoo) is our best shot. We like to bring people close enough to care — to let them hear how quietly the elephants move and smell them and see their wrinkles and the intelligence in their eyes. Then it’s easy to get people jazzed to help protect them.”
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Mr. Pickles, Thai, Methai and Mrs. Pickles are the four oldest animals at the zoo. Three 47-year-old great apes are next in seniority — Cheyenne, an orangutan, and Charlie and Lucy, chimpanzees.
The chimps used to be famous — they had their mugs on greeting cards and appeared in Hollywood movies and TV shows 20 to 30 years ago. Back then, they were young and relatively easy to train, and there were fewer rules and regulations protecting wild animals.
Both Lucy and Charlie had traumatic beginnings.
Lucy was born at the Dallas Zoo, then sold to a series of water and safari parks.
Charlie was a baby in the wilds of Africa when poachers slaughtered the adults in his family, then captured and sold him.
Charlie probably remembers the massacre, says Judy McAuliffe, curator of primates. For her and the Houston chimps — there are 13 plus Charlie — he is a model of resiliency.
Some days Charlie is in the big middle of rowdy, pushy chimp shenanigans. Other days he’s more circumspect and pinching his left shoulder.
To ease the arthritis pain in his neck and feet,
Charlie gets acupuncture, massages and a daily regimen of medicine, some of it hidden in his yogurt.
Cheyenne, the orangutan, has been famous, too. She went viral on the Internet when she took on her fourth foster baby in 2011.
Keeper Tammy Buhrmester still remembers their bonding process.
On Day 1, Cheyenne and 9-month-old Aurora mostly studied each other through mesh fencing. Slowly, Cheyenne extended a big, hairy hand.
On Day 2, Aurora walked through the open door and climbed in Cheyenne’s lap. The foster mom wrapped her hands around the baby’s middle and sniffed her from top to bottom.
“We were all crying,” Buhrmester says.
Cheyenne came to Houston in June 1993 at the age of 22. She’d worn out her welcome at four other zoos.
“She’d been labeled difficult,” Buhrmester says. “I think she had trust issues, but she’s mellowed.”
Like the other keepers who love their animals, Buhrmester feels a visceral connection to the zoo’s orangutans. Suffice to say she has a drawing of Cheyenne and Aurora tattooed on her left leg, and she has colored her hair orangutan red.
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The zoo staff is keenly aware that life is fragile and finite. In early September, there were five orangutans at the zoo. Then Pumpkin, 34, died after battling heart disease.
Throughout the struggle, Flanagan was by Pumpkin’s side, but the vet couldn’t stave off the inevitable.
Here is just a part of what Flanagan wrote to honor Pumpkin and his other patients:
“At the zoo, we often know animals from the day they are born until the day they die. When they reach the end of their lives, we let them go with dignity and peace.”
“We like to bring people close enough to care. … Then it’s easy to get people jazzed to help protect them.”
Darryl Hoffman, curator of large mammals