Zoo elephant gets ex-circus roommate
SAN ANTONIO — Lucky the elephant, a 56-year-old nearly lifetime resident of the San Antonio Zoo, got a new roommate on Monday, triggering further concern from animal rights activists who say the habitat is unsuitable for even one elephant.
But zoo officials say there’s plenty of room for Nicole, a 40-year-old Asian elephant who walked off a truck into her new home Monday to meet Lucky, who has been alone since her previous companion, Boo, died in 2013.
The zoo adopted Nicole, a former performing elephant, through an agreement with Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey, and has said the exhibit she’ll now share with Lucky is suitable for as many as three of the massive mammals.
Lucky is “quirky” and can be picky about her friends, according to Executive Director Tim Morrow, but he said the two seemed to have a friendly first introduction.
“Nicole came up and they smelled on each other and rubbed on each other a little bit, like elephants do,” Morrow said. “(Nicole is) really a caring, gentle elephant, she’s not really dominant … she’s sort of down the middle of the road, kind of like Lucky.”
Private bonding
A red barrier at the beginning of the walkway leading to the elephant habitat barred visitors from seeing the new elephant Monday because the two needed private bonding time, Morrow said. In lieu of an open exhibit, the zoo released a video on its Facebook page showing Nicole fiddling with a tire hanging from a post before stretching her wrinkled trunk out to greet Lucky over a green fence.
The video, along with the announcement, prompted immediate disquiet among animal rights activists who have long protested Lucky’s living conditions.
Rachel Mathews, associate director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement at PETA, released a statement Monday afternoon calling the zoo’s actions a “dirty circus deal.”
‘There’s no justice’
Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus organizations Nicole came from, announced in January that all of its 42 elephants would move to the 200-acre Ringling Bros. Conservation Center in Florida by the end of May. If Nicole doesn’t develop a positive relationship with Lucky, Morrow said she will go to the center.
“(Bringing in Nicole is a) half measure meant to silence the public outcry against the San Antonio Zoo, where one lonely elephant, Lucky, has swayed back and forth in psychological distress for years,” Mathews said. “There’s no justice in locking her up in a small, virtually barren enclosure alongside another elephant.”
Nicole’s arrival comes in the midst of a legal battle between the zoo and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which filed a lawsuit on behalf of three San Antonians in 2015, accusing administration of damaging Lucky’s health.
The decision to get a companion for Lucky was not based on the lawsuit, Morrow said.
“I think that the people that don’t want elephants in zoos will not be swayed, and that’s not why we do the things that we do,” Morrow said. “Really, what we do is not for our opponents, it’s for the betterment of the species.”
Lucky’s and Nicole’s exhibit is expected to reopen Tuesday.