Understanding an elephant: A life of woe
The killing of a keeper by the elephant she loved was seen as a total betrayal of trust. In the elephant’s eyes, however, the betrayal began long ago. Kirsty Johnston reports.
In the months before she crushed her keeper to death, Mila the African elephant had been having panic attacks.
Keeper Helen Schofield, a trained vet who lived on site at Franklin Zoo, would comfort the three-tonne animal by speaking with it through a safety wall until she went back to sleep. But whether panic was a factor the day Helen Schofield was killed by Mila is largely unknown.
Emergency services were called to the zoo on April 25, around 4.30pm, amid calls that the the 42-year-old vet had been crushed in the elephant’s trunk. The elephant may have been frightened by something. It may have made a mistake. But experts say it is more likely that Mila, after more than 35 years in captivity, simply snapped.
‘‘I think she deliberately did what she did,’’ said Jeffrey Masson, a psychiatry expert who specialises in animal emotions.
‘‘From our point of view it’s a betrayal but the elephant may have decided – she’s not my friend.’’
The African elephant is a highly intelligent animal. It is also extremely complex. In the wild, they live in family groups, spending much of their days feeding, bathing, grooming and engaging in social activities.
Mila, however, never had the chance to be social. Aged three, she was taken from her family group in Africa, likely in a cull where all of her herd were butchered in front of her, and forced into captivity.
In zoos at London and Honolulu, Mila was bullied by the other elephants, so she was bought by trainer Tony Ratcliffe and flown to New Zealand to join the Whirling Bros circus.
During that time, Mila travelled constantly, learning tricks taught to her by Mr Ratcliffe – with the aid of a bullhook – and performing for crowds. Sometimes she was shackled. Other times she was allowed to amble about a paddock before a show.
It was in the circus, experts believe, that the young elephant sustained the mental harm that left her damaged for life.
‘‘You can imagine the emotional stress that an animal would have undergone to see other family members being slaughtered,’’ said the head of animal protection agency SAFE, Hans Kriek.
‘‘Then to be travelling, chained up, where she had hardly any room to move and only one person in her life that would give her some attention . . . who was also the person that kept her captive and made her perform tricks – it’s tragic.’’
Mila would have bonded with Mr Ratcliffe, experts say, but how healthy a bond the pair actually had was questionable.
Mr Kriek believed the elephant developed something like ‘‘Stockholm Syndrome’’ because Mila had no choice but to look for affection anywhere she could get it.
‘‘She was completely subjugated to the will of a human being. She had no will of her own,’’ he said.
Mr Masson suggested she may also suffer from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder, usually caused by trauma and resulting in severe anxiety.
However, if you ask Mr Ratcliffe, he does not agree. The elephant, who he called Jumbo, was his friend, and he loved her ‘‘like family’’.
‘‘You only need to see her with me,’’ he said. ‘‘She loves me.’’
Video footage shows that in her circus trailer, Mila began to routinely sway side to side. Bored. Deprived. Isolated. And maybe lonely, if she had known enough of society to know what lonely meant.
‘‘Impoverished,’’ said elephant expert Peter Stroud. ‘‘From the point of view of nature you can say she was impoverished.
‘‘If she was a human being she’d certainly be pretty screwed up.’’
You have to be careful, Mr Stroud said, when attributing sentiments to elephants because although they certainly have emotions they’re not necessarily in line with human feeling. ‘‘Saying ‘the elephant loves me’ – I wouldn’t say that,’’ he said.
In 2009, after extensive lobbying by SAFE, Mila was released from the Loritz Zoo, who by that stage had bought her from Mr Ratcliffe.
Ms Schofield, touched by the animal’s story, decided to take her in and help get her ready for a move to a sanctuary in the United States.
Mila would have liked moving to the zoo, experts say. There was more space. She could play in mud and sand and with water, but at the same time her bond with Mr Ratcliffe, dysfunctional though it might have been, was broken. More trauma. And Mila was alone again.
Ms Schofield recognised the loneliness and wanted to help. She spent hours with Mila, comforting her, playing with her, feeding her.
Mila’s life at the zoo was stable. Elephants like predictability and Ms Schofield provided that for her. Those who saw them together said there was a new bond. Plans were progressing to get Mila to a sanctuary.
But something went wrong. It was tragic that Mila didn’t know Ms Schofield was trying to help.
‘‘The thing is,’’ said Mr Masson, ‘‘what we regard as ‘help’ is a form of domination. And no animal likes domination.’’
What happened inside Mila’s head on April 25 is impossible to know.
‘‘She’s a wild animal out of her context,’’ said Mr Stroud. ‘‘Something snapped.’’
Mila is still at the zoo. She is eating and sleeping and apparently calm. It’s unknown if she will ever get to the animal sanctuary in California, where she will be able to find company at last.
But elephants have enormous patience.
‘‘I believe,’’ said Mr Stroud, ‘‘that Mila has come to some accommodation with her lot in life. She has switched off as a way of coping and now she is just waiting.
‘‘That’s what Mila is doing, she’s waiting.
‘‘And it’s easy to misinterpret that as ‘she’s fine’.’’