THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 18, 1995 TAG: 9504180289
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Sunday I watched an elephant play with a huge tire in her compound at the Virginia Zoo in Lafayette Park on Granby Street.
It was spontaneous, all her own doing. The steel-belted tire from an amphibious vessel is so large that a man scarcely can lift it, much less toss it over his head as Monica the elephant did over hers - as easily as a child flipping a Frisbee.
The zoo had just opened. Monica and her pal Lisa emerged from quarters as if coming from the Ark.
The tire was tethered to the ground by a long, spiraling steel-link chain. After taking in the outside world, Monica moseyed over to the tire, lifted it with her trunk and hurled it 25 feet.
Applause arose from the crowd watching from behind the wall rimming the compound. Monica set up the tire to stand alone and then straddled it, between her ponderous tree-trunk front legs, and, moving forward slowly, she rolled the upright tire under her, fore to aft.
When the tire came under her posterior, she sat upon it with the utmost grace. The tire collapsed as if it were a rubber band.
More applause erupted. Monica arose, seized the tire, and flung it in a great arc over her back, as elephants dust themselves. It bounced off her bulk like a toy.
Grasping it again, she threw it skyward so that it landed atop her head at a rakish angle. It stayed.
Swaying, Monica the elephant became a dignified dowager, who, upon taking one sherry too many at an afternoon social, becomes tipsy and winds up with her hat slightly askew over a droll eye.
Her friend, Lisa, made no move to join her Sunday in the frolic. Louise Hill, zoo supervisor of animal services, said Monday that Monica is the dominant one, but that once in a while, after she has finished play, she permits Lisa to take a turn until, Monica, grumbling, wants her tire back - and takes it.
They arrived at the zoo in 1973. The same size, they were two years old and are now in their prime at 22. An elephant's life span, 60 to 80 years, is roughly that of humans.
Hill remembered getting a call late one night from a zoo security guard reporting that Monica had got her head through the tire and over her ears, where it stuck. Handlers used bolt cutters and a hacksaw to take off the tire. Monica was quite docile, as if she knew they were helping her, Hill said.
We had come to the zoo to watch the ``World of Birds,'' a wonderful act of free-flying birds of prey three times a day.
As we were leaving, marveling, a 5-year-old spied a tiny wild rabbit, gray-brown and big-eyed amid willows hard by the enclosure for the spider monkey. The rabbit in the willows was about the size of the chocolate bunny the boy had found that morning in an Easter basket.
From an elephant to a rabbit in a morning's visit. There's always something new to entrance you at the zoo. ILLUSTRATION: Drawings
by CNB