The Elephant Sanctuary, Hohenwald, Tennessee

Then why would you willingly walk right through the wide metal bars of the fortress that restrains Maggie, the zoo's towering, 9,100-pound African elephant?

Especially knowing that, if she wanted to, it would probably take Maggie and her powerful, pillarlike legs less than a minute to stomp Steve into silence -- then, with one graceful sweep of her trunk, toss whatever was left of his quivering carcass back where it came from.

Yet there is a man in Anchorage who walks into Maggie's pen almost every day of the week without fear or favor, then sometimes turns his back. His name is Rob Smith. For the past eight years he has been Maggie's trainer, which is very likely the most dangerous job in Alaska.

Training elephants is risky anywhere. A 1997 study by the U.S. Department of Labor found that commercial fishermen were 20 times more likely to suffer a fatal accident on the job than the average worker -- and that elephant trainers were three times more likely to suffer a fatal accident on the job than commercial fishermen. That's because there are only a few hundred elephant trainers in the United States, but each year one or two get killed by their elephants and others are badly injured.

Working as a trainer in Anchorage, however, is especially risky, considering that the only elephant in town is Maggie.

It's not that Maggie is a bad elephant. Zoo officials speak of her as "high-spirited" and "sometimes temperamental." But a report that appeared about five years ago in the Anchorage Press was less sanguine. It noted that in her first 16 years in Anchorage, Maggie as a teenager had already caused "serious bodily harm" to 26 trainers and handlers. Then it quoted an anonymous Maggie observer -- a mother of three toddlers -- who was just then visiting the zoo.

"Maggie's mean," the mother said. "You know that purring sound she makes? That means she's agitated and ready to attack. You see her grabbing tires with her trunk and smashing them up against her paddock walls; they say she's playing, but that's how elephants kill their enemies."

Zoo curator Patrick Lampi doesn't count himself as one of Maggie's enemies, if she has any. But in his short, anxious stint as one of the zoo's elephant handlers, he was swatted across the room by Maggie's trunk on one occasion and backed into a corner on another.

"There is no way you can imagine something that big coming at you mad," Lampi said recently. "She had me in the corner for a while because I pulled her off somebody else."

That's why Lampi was grateful to meet Smith in 1995. He had just been discharged from the local Army base and had responded to the zoo's help-wanted ad for an animal handler. He didn't have any experience, he said, but he was willing to learn. Lampi asked him if he'd be willing to assist the zoo's elephant trainer. Smith said yes.

"In all my years here," Lampi said, "Rob is the only person who came in and interviewed with me that I turned around and sent his application to the guy that was in charge of elephants at the time and said, 'This guy may work out.'"

Eight years later, Smith is still working out. He was quickly promoted to head elephant trainer after his predecessor left, and he has remained in the position ever since. And yet in all that time, Smith has never been injured -- "at least not seriously" -- by Maggie.

"Mag and Rob have a very special relationship," Lampi said. "You can just see that she's eager to do whatever pleases him."

Wanting to observe Maggie for a recent news story, I had also wanted to meet Smith, 40, and watch him in action. He was willing to oblige on one condition.

"It's hard to come on down here and do a story without going there and standing next to her," Smith said, meeting me near the zoo entrance. "You can look at her on the Internet all you want, but a 6-inch elephant ain't anything."

INTRODUCTION

Fifteen minutes later, I was inclined to agree.

"I don't expect any problems at all," Smith said after switching on the radio in his adjoining workshop and glancing into Maggie's elephant pen. "If there is a problem and she does get aggressive ... this is a safe place. Come back here."

Then he slipped between the thick vertical bars at the back of the elephant barn and told me it was all right to follow. Maggie walked up to face us.

Earlier, Alaska Zoo director "Tex" Edwards had said that Maggie sees her world in well-defined terms. There is a pecking order for Maggie, he said. No. 1 in the hierarchy is Smith. No one is more important than him. "No. 2 is Maggie. And No. 3 is ... everybody else."

Maggie extended her long trunk nearly to my nose to learn exactly where I belonged in her universe.

"She's going to want to smell your breath," Smith said. "So if you can just blow gently into the trunk there, she's curious about every aspect of you."

I did as I was advised. Maggie took it all in. Then she dropped the tip of her trunk to my ankles.

"OK, she wants to smell your shoes," Smith said. "She's just going to take a big breath. ... Nice smell, huh, Maggie? Nice smell."

Maggie moved one step closer. Her tusks were shorter than I expected. He'd cut them down, Smith said, because Maggie was inadvertently tearing up the walls in her sleep.

Then Maggie swung her trunk in a way that Smith found significant.

"She's just being silly," he said. "She tends to try to get away with stuff when people are down here. She'll do things she knows she's not supposed to do."

She lumbered toward the center of the room, and Smith followed, tapping gently on her legs with a stick.
"Feel free to come right out here," he said. "I'm not going to let anything happen, I promise. If you were to be in here alone, she would ... push. Not physically. She would get in your space and make you -- well, it's very intimidating."

I stepped out to the center of the barn.

Maggie began to purr.

MOODS

There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask Smith. One was, what did that purring sound mean?

" If you know someone who sticks their tongue out while they're working or they hum while they're working? That's her subconscious thing," he said. "Almost every elephant has a different little noise like that. She's just sucking air with her mouth. That's all."

Was there a way to tell whether Maggie was happy?

"Sure, just like you can tell if your dog in the house is happy or your cat at home is happy," Smith said. "They have their own moods and their own habits, and once you get to know it, you realize when she's mad or happy or upset."

What does she do?

" It depends on the situation. The same action can mean two different things on different days. She may throw rocks at people one day because she's upset. The very next day it may be a total amusement thing to her. She's just messing around and being happy and throwing rocks at people."

If he hasn't been injured, has he ever been hurt by Maggie?

"Not to any great degree, no. Nothing broken or abraded -- just my pride. It can be ... exciting at times, I'll put it that way."

A Web site opposed to the use of elephants in circuses has reported that, during the 1990s, 18 people were killed and 89 others seriously injured by captive elephants. Did that sound realistic?

Trainers do get hurt, Smith said.

"Last year I think there were five people killed (in Europe and the United States)," he said. "Two in France, one in Holland, one in England and one in the United States."

Ever since Maggie's former stablemate, Annabelle, died of a foot infection seven years ago, Maggie has been alone at the zoo. Would she be happier in the company of other elephants?

"I don't know," Smith said. "That's a hard question to answer. She may very well be happier with an elephant, and she may not be. I know of an elephant in Los Angeles that's killed two pen mates. So they keep her alone."

How did he feel about the letters to the editor that have appeared in the Daily News recently arguing in favor of transferring Maggie to a zoo with more elephants or an elephant sanctuary?

"It's hard for me when someone writes a letter to send the elephant away," Smith said. "Where are you going to put her? What's best for her? I don't know. I don't know if anybody can answer that question. ... Maggie might find elephants she can get along with. She might not."

An animal rights activist who videotaped Maggie in her barn says the tape shows her using her trunk to pick at her chest in a manner indicative of an elephant in distress.

"I bet I know what she was doing," Smith said. "Get over here, Maggie. Get over, get over. ... See right there? Those are her breasts. ... Come on, get your foot up. C'mon, get it way up. ... See her nipples right here? Sometimes -- and we think it has to do with (menstrual) cycling -- sometimes she'll put her trunk between her front legs and pull her teats. Sometimes she tends to do that when she's really agitated. She did that when Annabelle was here too. ... I think it runs with her cycling. ... But we don't fully understand the cycle yet. And that's just a theory I've heard.

"As far as people videotaping Maggie and saying they're stressed or whatever, I have people come in here and Maggie will be standing against the wall having a nap. And they'll say, 'Oh, she looks so extremely upset, so sad.' So I'll say, 'What's a happy elephant look like? She's sleeping right now. I don't know what you want out of her. She's asleep.'

AMUSEMENTS

A day in the life of Maggie differs from season to season. In the heart of winter, Smith said, she stays inside a lot. But with the arrival of warmer temperatures -- as soon as the thermometer rises above 40 -- she gets to play in the snow of her quarter-acre paddock. Then in summer, he takes her for long walks.

"I came here in 1995," Smith said as Maggie stepped across the snow on a recent balmy day. "Maggie came here in 1983. Maggie hadn't -- as far as I know -- been out of that yard. So we started going for a walk.

"Apparently we have elephant-eating monsters out there because she was pretty scared to go at first, because that was her secure place."

Elephants can posthole through snow without difficulty -- just like Hannibal and his elephants crossing the Alps, Smith said. Their feet spread wide as they step on the snow, then telescope narrow as they pull them back up, an adaptation that also allows elephants to navigate through mud without getting stuck.

Sometimes horseback riders venture to edge of the zoo bordering the elephant paddock, and Maggie lets out an ear-shattering trumpet.

"She tends to roar or trumpet only when she's terribly excited," Smith said. "Or when she's really trying to scare the snot out of somebody. A lot of people ride up to the back gate in the summertime on their horses and she takes a great deal of pleasure in sending the horses away riderless. ...

"If you've ever been close to an elephant when they're roaring, it's truly, truly, truly a tremendous thing. They will shake the building."

Now Smith wonders how much longer that roar will last in Anchorage. Will the zoo officials decide to find Maggie another home? Will they spend hundreds of thousand of dollars to import more elephants for company and build a big arena? Or will everything stay the same?

"Could we use a bigger barn?" Smith said finally. "Yeah. Could we use a bigger outside fenced-in area? Yeah. Could we use more elephants? Yeah. I mean, this is all my opinion, of course, and I'm probably going to get in trouble for it. But I don't think anybody is doing it perfect. There are some people doing it better than others. But it all comes down to doing it the best you can."

9,100-pound Debate
Alaska Zoo Looks at Both Sides in the 'Free Maggie' Movement
Anchorage Daily News
February 24, 2004

By GEORGE BRYSON
Anchorage Daily News

One day, the "Free Maggie" movement will probably go away. The only question is whether Maggie will too, possibly to a better life.

A plea to find a new home for the 22-year-old African elephant, a star attraction at the Alaska Zoo in South Anchorage for more than two decades, went public recently as several letter-to-the-editor writers debated whether Maggie is lonely, cold and cramped in her winter compound or actually quite happy.

The controversy has spread beyond Alaska, with animal rights groups as far off as England posting photographs of Maggie on their Web sites and urging her transfer. Since her stable mate Annabelle died seven years ago, she has lived without the company of another elephant, contrary to national zoo standards.
Alaska Zoo officials have been weighing the pluses of keeping Maggie against the minuses of spending the money required to improve her care and quarters, or even add to her number.

Caught in the middle is Maggie, the 9,100-pound pachyderm with a gift for throwing stones.

"These days, she spends nearly all her time indoors with inadequate stimulation and minimal light," Michael Gollob wrote to the Daily News. "It's widely known that female elephants are extremely social and form deep bonds with other elephants. Maggie has no one to communicate with."

Dorothea Lovejoy disagreed. Twenty-one years ago, she helped pay for Maggie's journey from the East Coast to Anchorage so that Annabelle could have some company. And now Lovejoy thinks Maggie is happy where she is, having adopted people for companionship instead of animals.

"Have you ever watched her run to greet her zookeeper?" Lovejoy wrote in her own letter, "or delight in a new snowfall, or pick up a stone to throw at you?"

But a home that's closer in character to her own grassy savannah birthplace in southern Africa would be preferable, wrote Judy Stohl, who suggested Maggie be placed in one of the new state-of-the-art elephant sanctuaries where Asian and African elephants run free over hundreds of acres.

"What a wonderful community endeavor it would be to support Maggie's relocation to one of these facilities," Stohl said. "We could then enjoy Maggie's new life through the Web sites they each have -- a life that will likely last much longer in retired freedom. Please, Alaska Zoo, retire Maggie!"

No, keep her here, countered Marvin Lee, arguing that the whole purpose for having a zoo is to educate people and broaden their experience. And the only chance some young Alaskans have had to see a real, live elephant has been in Anchorage.

Wrote Lee, "The children of Alaska love Maggie."

They definitely do, zoo director "Tex" Edwards said last week. But Edwards faces a dilemma.

The zoo's core purpose, as agreed upon by its board of directors a year ago, is "connecting people with animals," which Maggie does quite well. But its longer-lived mission statement, approved by the board in 1991, specifically directs the zoo to "exhibit wildlife of the arctic and subarctic climates," and there Maggie is at least one hemisphere out of bounds.

"The first and fundamental question is: Should there be an elephant in the Alaska Zoo?" Edwards said. "The dichotomy is ... Maggie does not fit our mission. She is not an Arctic or a subarctic animal. But more than most other animals, she hits the core purpose just head on -- in connecting people to animals."

But what's best for Maggie?

To find their own answer, about a year ago members of the zoo board of directors and staff began meeting with elephant experts and zoo officials across North America. Overall, Edwards said, the experts were less concerned with the fact that a zoo in Alaska had an elephant as they were with Maggie's quality of life while she's here.

The size of her indoor enclosure and outdoor paddock were found to be more than adequate. But the advisers recommended that the zoo replace the concrete surface of Maggie's present indoor compound with a softer surface, like poured rubber.

"One thing we've heard is that a hard, cold concrete floor, over time, will contribute to arthritis and lack of flexibility," Edwards said.

The experts also recommended that Maggie get more exercise. Her handlers generally keep her inside as long as the temperature remains below 40 degrees.

A solution might be to build a new elephant arena -- a heated building with a dirt floor about 50 feet wide by 100 feet long -- which Edwards said would cost $200,000 to $250,000.

Finally, the experts recommended that Maggie be allowed to socialize more, preferably with other elephants. If the zoo board members decide she needs company, they'll need to either import more elephants or find a good home for Maggie Outside.

But turning the little Alaska Zoo into a state-of-the-art facility to house and socialize elephants could cost an enormous amount of money.

"I don't see that as being financially viable," Alaska Zoo curator Pat Lampi said. "As curator I have to take care of all the animals here in the zoo, and I can't see spending so much money" on just one species.

One of the Outside experts suggested that Maggie might be able to satisfy her social needs simply by interacting more with people. Edwards described it as "a minority opinion."

Existing zoo accreditation standards set by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association specify that a female elephant needs other female elephants for company. AZA's 2004 guide recommends "no less than three."
The Alaska Zoo is not accredited by the AZA, and Maggie is one reason.

"To my knowledge, she's the only solitary female African elephant in a zoo (in the United States) right now," said Mary Robinson, a former Anchorage resident who has been leading an Outside campaign to send Maggie to a sanctuary in the Lower 48.

Living in Anchorage for more than 30 years, Robinson got to know both Annabelle and Maggie during trips to the zoo. But then she began organizing and leading horseback safaris through Africa and saw firsthand what a huge discrepancy there was between the lives of isolated zoo elephants and elephants in the wild.

"I know people up there love her," Robinson said recently from her home in southern Oregon. "I know her keeper sounds like he's very fond of her, and I'm sure that she's fond of her keeper. But people cannot replace the company of another elephant. There is just no comparison."

A couple of years after Annabelle died, Robinson spoke to zoo officials about Maggie's predicament. The people at the zoo listened attentively, she said, but nothing changed. Now, five years later, she decided to take Maggie's case to the Internet by contacting animal rights groups, like the Captive Animals' Protection Society in England and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Virginia. She's enlisted a letter of support from the Humane Society of the United States.

She hopes the zoo takes steps soon to relocate Maggie, if not to a park dedicated to elephants then perhaps to one of the larger zoos that allow elephants to roam. She favors The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., with its 2,700 acres, two veterinarians and separate herds of African and Asian elephants.

But if the zoo doesn't act, then Robinson plans to spread the word among more animal groups and begin circulating petitions in Alaska.

"In other words," she said, "I want the public to know what's going on."

Letter To The Editor
Anchorage Daily News
Feb 25, 2004
Maggie the Elephant May Move
By Heidi Loranger

The Alaska Zoo has a 9,100 pound question to answer. Should its beloved African elephant Maggie, be moved to a lower-48 preserve for elephants? Many of Maggie's fans say the time has come for the pachyderm to live in a warmer climate.

In 1997, the zoo's other elephant, Annabelle died and that left Maggie alone in the elephant house. "We're concerned about her health, her psychological well being and we feel it's imperative that she get out of here now," says Yvonne Gollob with the Free Maggie Campaign. Maggie is not able to venture outside her enclosure when the temperature dips below 40 degrees, and in winter that means she is forced to stay inside without the company of another elephant for several months every year.

" She's a well adjusted elephant. She's healthy and a lot of kids wouldn't ever have the opportunity to see an elephant can see her here," says Alaska Zoo Curator Pat Lampi. However he does admit she would be able to spend more time outside in a warmer climate.

Maggie is 22 years old and has been at the Alaska Zoo since 1983. An inspection of her living conditions found that Maggie's pen needs a rubberized floor to ease the strain on her feet. Bringing up another elephant is really not an option for the zoo, it costs about 80 thousand dollars just to care for Maggie.

Zoo officials are still gathering information and will make a decision on whether Maggie stays of goes in the near future.

Letter to the Editor
Anchorage Daily News
January 14, 2004

Zoo elephant is lonely and cold; let Maggie retire to warmer clime.

As the weather dips into the teens and snow covers the ground, my thoughts turn to Maggie, the female African elephant at the Alaska Zoo. These days, Maggie spends nearly all her time indoors with inadequate stimulation and minimal light and, to make her situation worse, she is deprived of the companionship of other elephants. It is widely known that female elephants are extremely social and form deep bonds with other elephants. Maggie has no one to communicate with.

It is wonderful that the Anchorage community rallies for Maggie and loves to visit her, but it is also vital that our community recognize Maggie's social, psychological and physical needs. The zoo has said Maggie has a reputation for being difficult, but wouldn't you be difficult too if you lost your only companion to a premature, preventable death and stared at the same four walls for months on end in this cold climate?

While it is nice to embrace Maggie as a member of our community, isn't it only right to also recognize that Maggie was wild-caught and needs more than we can provide? Please join me and kindly ask the Alaska Zoo to retire Maggie to an elephant sanctuary where she can spend her remaining years with her own kind. After giving so much, I for one believe she deserves this much.

-- Michael Gollob
Anchorage

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