Zookeepers take over parenting duties

the elephant barn then back to him. It’s a sublime moment when they look into yours.

One day before her public viewing, a crowd had gathered outside, behind soundproof glass. She appeared through a doorway to a collective gush of voices.

“Oh my goodness gracious!” “Oh my Gaaawd!” “How cuuute!” “What’s he doing?” That last from a little boy as the baby stepped onto a riser and lifted her trunk upward, cobralike, to a drape, hung at about the height of the underside of a mama elephant.

Achorus of “awwww!” followed asshe listed toward a keeper on lumpylittle feet, her trunk swaying.

Raising a baby elephant

Mr. Theison finally gets the baby to chug a few swallows from the bottle then leads her to the outer barn, where he lets Tasha in from outside. Tasha enters slowly, enormously, eclipsing the sunlight that filled the doorway.

The 38-year-old matriarch has always been standoffish with young ones, but she is showing this baby unusual tolerance. She flaps her ears as Mr. Theison drops hay. She plucks hay with her trunk and lifts it to her mouth.

The ornery kid who likes to play with rubber balls and screeches when people leave her alone trots over to Tasha, swaying her trunk along the ground. She makes a noise like a seal. Tasha eats, nonplussed. These relationships, as they build, will mean the world to the baby, whose most important job besides gaining weight and warding off illness is to socialize with her kind — Tasha and Nan, the elders; Victoria, now almost 18; and Zuri and Angeline, both 9.

Her human parents include lead keeper Lisa Caruso, keeper Staci McDonough and Dr. Baker. With Mr. Theison, they all take shifts baby-sitting.

“When Willie leaves, she watches at the gate ’til he’s gone,” Dr. Baker said. “But we are all able to give her the bottle. When we brought her here [from Somerset], the other elephants would rumble,” a low hum like an idling motor. “She raised her head that first night and rumbled back.”

Ms. Caruso said one challenge of parenting an elephant is showing it “how to lie down without going then getting back up. I am tired, but this is cool. How often do you get to raise a baby elephant? And you get to see what elephants do at night. I hear Tash snoring.”

“Nan slams on a bucket,” Ms. McDonough said.

“I’vedrifted off a few times on the haywith the rhythm of the fans,” Mr.Theison said. “I usually wake upwith a little trunk in my face.”