photos by Peter DiAntoni
Everyone agrees. Ask any local and they’ll tell you the Milwaukee County Zoo is one of the best in the country. It’s at least in the top 10. It’s on a list somewhere; they remember reading or hearing about it.
“There isn’t a list,” laughs Charles Wikenhauser, the zoo’s executive director. Across the country, people often think their zoo is among the leaders because zoos are shaped by and become so close to their communities. “All communities are different and so all zoos are different,” he explains. Milwaukeeans are so proud of their zoo, they can’t imagine a better one.
Zoos seem simple but are often misunderstood. From the beginning, they were seen by many as a collection of exotic pets. Like most American zoos, Milwaukee’s began because some wealthy citizens, Gustave Pabst and Louis Auer, gave the city a gift of animals: 12 deer. Once Louis Lotz had added a hand-raised bald eagle named Pluto, the city had a zoo. Originally housed in a barn in West Park, the zoo grew to include more animals, and West Park became Washington Park. Its mission was to educate the public about North American animals, and that hasn’t changed much over time, even after the zoo moved to its current location in 1958.
“Zoos have always been about four things,” explains Bess Frank, the zoo’s recently retired curator of North American animals, “recreation, education, research and conservation.”
But the depth of a zoo’s research and conservation, not to mention the efforts made to ensure the public’s safety, are barely understood or appreciated. Visitors only see the animal in front of them and not the entire species, nor the habitat in which it lives. As the pace of global environmental degradation quickens, zoos have become vital outposts in the struggle to protect endangered species. But most people, nostalgic for the zoo they knew as children, may have no sense of that mission’s urgency. Behind the scenes, there’s a lot happening at the zoo.
+++++
One top 10 list that can be connected to Milwaukee is the size of its bonobo troop. Milwaukee’s 17-member bonobo troop is the largest captive one in the country. Often called pygmy chimps (before it was understood they were a separate species), bonobos live wild in only one place in the world: the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are an endangered species, and the poverty and political unrest in that country hinders efforts to save the bonobos and their jungle habitat.
Milwaukee first acquired its bonobos in 1984, says Dr. Jan Rafert, the zoo’s primate curator. The decision provoked some controversy. Milwaukee outbid other parties to purchase them from a private zoo in the Netherlands that was closing down. But it was a time when zoos were retreating from putting dollar values on animals because this might encourage the capture of animals in the wild. Milwaukee’s bonobo troop has continued to grow since then, as zookeepers here have become more skilled at working with them.
With his swept-back mane of white hair, prominent jaw and close-set eyes, Rafert looks somewhat like a primate himself. But that doesn’t win him any credit with the bonobos. They have different screeches for different people, explains Rafert, and he typically provokes the angriest one. That’s because he handles all the awful jobs, like wrestling a dead baby out of its mother’s arms. He does this to make sure the bonobos are always happy to see their keepers and the vet.
Sure enough, they have a less raucous screech for lead keeper Barbara Bell. She steps out of the kitchen, where boxes of fruit are stacked up against the wall, and wipes her hands. Medium height, with short, dark brown hair and a disarming gaze, Bell has made her career handling bonobos. Although they have been shrieking for her attention, once she opens the door to their enclosure, they go silent. Perched on ledges, hanging from the walls and draped over their tree, they make the entire room seem like its dripping little apes. Welcome to bonobo world.
Bell intended to work with Lomako, a bonobo she describes as “very flirtatious but a screw-off.” He’s not being cooperative, so she turns away, letting him know they won’t be working together. “If I see him going down the path of juvenile delinquency,” says Bell, “he has to stop.” She turns instead to his father, Lody, the group’s alpha male.
Bonobos are classed as great apes, our nearest relative in the animal world. But their social structure and culture are very different from that of other apes, challenging assumptions about human nature based on primate research. Rather than living in patriarchal troops where aggression leads to dominance, bonobos live in matriarchal societies (with one alpha male). Females “call the shots,” says Bell. Daughters are pushed out as they reach maturity, but sons usually stay with their mothers for life. They live cooperatively and are known to express empathy, maintain lifelong friendships and enjoy recreational sex, which they use to strengthen bonds, make up after disagreements and welcome strangers into the group.
Sitting with his knees tucked up to his body, his pointed ears sticking up over his head, Lody could easily play a sentry in a Star Warsmovie. “He knows to wait patiently,” says Bell. He watches her, waiting for instructions. Bell believes that behind every good matriarch is a strong male, and she and Rafert have been studying how alpha male Lody models compassion and leadership skills for the troop. When his good friend Kidogo was dying of heart disease, Lody carried him around, served him the tastiest morsels of food and was visibly depressed when he died.
Lody has adopted orphans, cradling and nurturing them for weeks, and regularly assisted a blind, elderly bonobo by leading her around the enclosure. When Milwaukee acquired Brian, a troubled young bonobo who’d been abused by his father, Lody mentored him. Other troop members were disturbed by Brian’s behavior and picked on him. But through Lody’s intervention, Brian was accepted into the group, and it appears that he – not Lomako, the son of dominant matriarch Maringa – may end up being Lody’s successor.
Like many of the bonobos, Lody has heart disease, but his keepers have become skilled at helping ease the stress of his medical care. Years ago, Bell went to an animal training school in Texas, where she worked with an expert who taught operant conditioning techniques used at places like Sea World – techniques to reduce stress and increase cooperation among captive animals. Bell “took some flak” from others at Milwaukee’s zoo for studying elsewhere, Rafert says. But within a year, he laughs, other departments were fighting over budget money to bring that trainer in to work with their keepers.
The techniques Bell learned improved her ability to communicate with the bonobos: They have a common language, and because the animals feel understood, they are less anxious. Life in the bonobo compound is less stressful. Now Lody can participate in medical procedures without being sedated. He is so comfortable with his cardiologist, Dr. Sam Wann of the Wisconsin Heart Hospital, that he tolerates leads being attached to his chest and will lie still in awkward positions while doctors take their readings.
“Up,” says Bell, and Lody reaches up with his arms and stretches out his body, exposing his hairy belly. “Belly,” she says, and he presses it forward and reaches for the banana she’s offering. “Chest,” she commands, and Lody puffs up as if expecting a medal. Anticipating her next command, he turns around just as she says, “Back.” The bonobos near Lody are watching, and Bell makes a couple requests of them, then distributes the last of the banana. “OK you guys,” she dismisses them. “You’re just a stroke of genius today.”
Behind Bell is Neema, a mother bonobo with a baby in her arms. Neema, who Bell calls a “cool lady,” pushes her lips through the wire. Bell brushes her fingers over Neema’s lips while the baby bonobo reaches out to touch Bell’s forearm, its long brown fingers closing around the zookeeper’s wrist. In operant conditioning, participation is entirely voluntary. If the animals don’t want to work, they don’t have to. For the bonobos, though, “work is a joy,” says Bell.
Bonobos are smart, manipulative animals who can frustrate novice trainers. Bell tries to be proactive, setting up new trainers for success. Otherwise, she says of the bonobos, “They’ll eat you alive. It’s like a substitute teacher.” She’s seen new keepers walk out of the room in tears, the bonobos shrieking gleefully behind them. A bonobo enclave is particularly challenging, says director Wikenhauser. “It’s like a neighborhood of strange people.”
A constant commitment to improving its bonobo-handling techniques is one reason Milwaukee has been a leader in the field for decades. In 1989, just five years after the bonobos were acquired, Dr. Gay Reinartz of the Milwaukee Zoological Society, the zoo’s educational and fundraising arm, took over as head of the species survival plan (SSP) for the bonobo for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. These management plans are “a collaborative effort to treat these animals as a whole population and not as an island,” says Bruce Beehler, deputy director of Milwaukee’s zoo. Milwaukee’s bonobo plan was one of the first international SSPs created.
Of some 2,500 facilities that exhibit exotic animals in the U.S., only 216 are accredited by the AZA, and the main criteria for accreditation is participation in the SSPs. Through these plans, American zoos, and sometimes European ones, make sure animals are bred to preserve their genetic diversity and managed in a way that contributes to the health of the overall population. Every few years, the SSP standards are reviewed by experts to make sure animals are receiving the best possible care. At Milwaukee’s zoo, more than 100 species of animals are part of an SSP program.
The SSP system is also intended to help people understand the habitat needs of animals and how these habitats are endangered throughout the world. Some experts criticize the SSP system for concentrating on larger, charismatic animals – such as pandas, elephants and gorillas – that are popular with the general public, and for not focusing on those species that could be reintroduced to the wild. Bess Frank, though, defends the focus on large mammals she calls “umbrella species.” Save the habitat of the migratory African elephant, she says, and you save all the other species in that habitat. From the zoos’ perspective, they are preserving the genetic diversity of animals in their care and providing a critical opportunity for humans – whose behavior threatens the original environments of these animals – to develop empathy for the beasts’ plight. “The primary mission of the zoo,” says Beehler, “is to raise the conservation consciousness of the individual.”
Ironically, this means the people who respect and know these animals the best are in charge of their captivity. Returning from an African research trip where he observed gorillas in the wild, Rafert remembers stopping off at the London Zoo on his layover. Seeing the gorillas on concrete floors and behind bars, he said, “just about killed me.”
+++++
“First,” jokes Neil Dretzka,“I locate the lion.” Dretzka is area supervisor of the Florence Mila Borchert Big Cat Country (many zoo exhibits are named after prominent donors), and safety is a big concern as he enters the lion enclosure. The zoo’s security measures require that keepers be alert to their animals and submit every gate and door to a two-person, two-lock security check.
He and head cat keeper Val Werner are bringing Sasha the lion her supper – five pounds of raw meat from the zoo’s Nebraska-based specialty supplier of meat products. Werner has placed the food in one of the two rooms of Sasha’s enclosure. Called a “shift,” these off-display rooms are separated by a heavy steel door so the keepers can restrict the animals to one side and safely enter the other for cleaning or feeding. There are also bars that press around the animals so they can be immobilized without sedation for routine veterinary procedures. While Dretzka explains this process, Sasha paces angrily on the other side of the door, snarling in irritation about the delay in feeding. “She doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” Werner says.
When Sasha gets the food, she lays down with her paws on either side of it, her head stretched protectively over the food, just in case some puny human tries to take it away.
Lions have a distant and somewhat cross-eyed stare, as if they’re looking through you to some shimmering horizon. When they do focus on you, it’s alarming: It automatically provokes an elevated heart rate, sweat and tension. Even after all his years working in zoos, says Beehler, it still scares him when the lions lock him in their sights. “Every hair on my body stands up.”
Werner, who is small and trim, leans toward Sasha and the lion roars, her mouth big enough to bite off Werner’s head. The visitors in the room are backing away, but Werner, her own tail of braided hair streaked with gray, stands up and calmly responds to the roar. “Sasha wants to get a word in,” she explains. “You know, get the story right.”
Something is irritating Sasha, and her grumbling is so powerful, it thrums the cement walls and resonates in the pit of your stomach. She starts to hack quietly. “Did you snort something?” Werner asks. It sounds like there’s a hairball in her throat, but Werner thinks that’s unlikely because Sasha stopped cleaning herself when her hair began coming out in clumps, precisely because it made her choke. One of Sasha’s other old-lady problems is that food gets caught in her cheeks, “like an older person whose dentures don’t fit right,” Werner explains. “This is what happens when you grumble under your breath,” she says solicitously to Sasha. “It’s like talking with your mouth full.” Sasha lowers her head, hacks, and returns to her food.
The way Werner figured out that Sasha doesn’t like to have her back scratched, but Amba the Siberian Tiger does, was by sticking her hand through the bars and scratching. But the tiger, which arrived at the zoo just three months ago, presents other difficulties.
Dretzka is trying to open the shift door so Werner can put out Amba’s food, but the tiger roars and swats at it with a paw the size of a seat cushion. The door flies to the end of its track and Dretzka snatches his hand out of the way. “It’s a hazard,” Werner concedes. Dretzka takes a breath and tries again. Between assaults, he manages to inch the door open and keep his hand from getting smashed. Werner has two suggestions that could solve the problem. The first is to spritz Amba with water from a spray bottle. “The old house cat deterrent.” The more long-term option is to use operant conditioning methods to teach the tiger to attack the door on command, and once she learns to respond to their reward system, she’ll only do it when they request it.
Done eating and aware she’s being talked about, Amba stalks her visitors. She comes around the corner to get closer to them and slides her striped face across the bars. Werner presses her palm into the same space and growls softly, “rah, rah, rah.” Amba wipes her cheek against Werner’s hand, curling a lip to reveal a finger-long fang. A raspy purr rolls up from her throat. Werner moves closer, her face just a few inches from the tiger’s. “Such a good kisser,” she murmurs. Amba purrs and licks the bars, the strength of her tongue lifting and rattling the heavy steel door.
The zookeepers’ close relationship with the cats helps protect the public. One of the cheetahs once scooted up a tree, onto an overhanging branch that should have been trimmed, and then onto a roof from which he could have escaped. With a little persuasion, the keepers lured him to the roof door so he could be sedated and lifted back down into his enclosure.
Still, a loose cat isn’t the zoo’s biggest fear. As Beehler explains, they’re not inclined to wander far from where they find their food. The animal who wants to roam and hunt is the polar bear, and the idea of one escaping makes everyone at the zoo shudder. Even stuffed, they’re dangerous. The stuffed polar bear on display in the Peck Welcome Center sent two workers to the hospital when they bumped their heads on his claws while moving him.
One of the zoo’s young wolves escaped once, but was quickly caught. Monkeys have also escaped: One of the plumber’s responsibilities is to keep the moats around Monkey Island from freezing in the winter and creating an ice bridge over which the monkeys can walk to freedom. Beehler admits there have been a few mornings during his long career in which he’s arrived to find the macaques have gotten off the island and are “sitting on the rail.” Yelling and shooing them back in is usually sufficient. “They like where they are,” he says.
+++++
Milwaukee’s zoo has animals from nearly every temperature region of the world, and that makes it a tall order to create the right climate for every creature. Giraffes can’t get cold. Penguins can’t get hot. While penguins can stand freezing weather, their keepers can’t, so the zoo must figure out the perfect balance between killing the penguins and frosting their keepers. That’s the job of maintenance supervisor Kevin Klatt.
Tall, soft-spoken, a former marine, Klatt oversees 28 cooling systems and 29 boilers that must be checked twice a day. The penguin chiller stretches the width of an entire building and up onto the roof, like some massive creeping vine, and it’s an irksome maintenance challenge for Klatt. “It’s the bane of his existence,” Beehler says.
Klatt and his staff handle repairs, emergencies and a wide range of problems, including some 800 work orders in 2006. They can be found throughout the grounds doing all the tasks that don’t fit someone else’s job description. They may help set up animal displays, build ladders for bears who’ve fallen into the moat, and repair the perimeter fence after cars on Bluemound Road crash through it. When he isn’t at work, Klatt’s on call and gets summoned from his home about two nights a week. His kids, he grumbles, hate that he works at the zoo because it’s the last place he wants to take them. “They never get to go.”
Horticulturalist Noah Huber is in more contact with the public than almost any other zoo employee. In the middle of eradicating poisonous weeds, installing seasonal displays, and delivering plants to the animals for their enjoyment, he is continuously interrupted by visitors’ questions, most of which could be answered if they read the nearest sign, which he cheerfully does for them. Customer service isn’t his job, “but if I can make a visitor’s experience better…” He shrugs.
Zoo staff members have to be flexible. In early April, an unseasonably hot day coincided with the first day of spring vacation in Illinois, and the zoo was packed with thousands more visitors than normal. Still staffed for winter, the panicked concessions staff radioed for assistance. Employees from all over the zoo pitched in to flip burgers, toss pizzas and make change. Wikenhauser jokes that one of his accountants was furious when her till ended up a dollar short at the end of her concession shift. No one is exempt from occasional double duty. “I haven’t had to clean toilets yet,” he laughs. “But I have delivered toilet paper.”
The public side of the zoo takes much effort. About 90 percent of the animals are on display at any one time. The big cats and bears and elephants may be popular, but they are also very expensive to keep for a zoo with an always-tight, $28 million annual budget. Meanwhile, most of the zoo’s research and conservation efforts happen behind the scenes, out of public view. Last year, the zoo spent $23,000 just to feed five Micronesian kingfishers. This bright orange, fist-sized bird with a scooped bill is extinct on its native island, Guam, and researchers have struggled to keep the animals alive in captivity. Since conservationists hope to reintroduce Milwaukee’s birds to the wild, their contact with people must be minimized.
The zoo is also working with researchers in Chile who are trying to save the Humboldt penguin. They are doing research on iguanas in the Caribbean and working with experts in Granada to find ways to stop a fungus that’s growing over the skins of Eleuth frogs and slowly suffocating them. “The zoos that support these unglamorous projects are utterly, utterly necessary,” says Brandie Smith, interim director of conservation and science for the AZA. While the public may not know much about Milwaukee’s conservation efforts, the zoo’s peers do. Last year, in honor of its work with the bonobos, the zoo won the prestigious Edward H. Bean award, named after an influential early director of the AZA who got his start at Milwaukee’s zoo.
+++++
It was back in 1906, some 15 years after Pabst and Auer donated those first deer, that Milwaukee’s zoo had grown to the point where it needed a director. Edward H. Bean became the zoo’s first director before moving on to Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo and the AZA. With Bean’s support, Henry “Heine” Bulder established a private-sector support group, the Zoological Society of Milwaukee, and with the proceeds of its first fundraiser, purchased Countess Heine, the zoo’s first elephant.
She was meant to draw crowds and did. Her purchase was in keeping with what Wikenhauser calls the “postage stamp” philosophy of Victorian-era zoos, which focused on variety, collecting one of as many different animals as possible. Animals were displayed in small cages in close proximity to each other. The approach reflected the cultural thinking of that time, emphasizing man’s superiority over nature and bringing wild beasts into the rationally ordered landscape of the city park. Washington Park Zoo was located in a Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park, whose curving paths and naturalistic geography was similar in design to the parks of Western Europe, the homelands from which most Milwaukee residents had emigrated. The zoo felt both familiar and intimate for citizens. “It was a big part of their lives,” says Wikenhauser.
The zoo moved to its current location in 1958, securing more than 200 acres of woods and open space. In keeping with the philosophy of that time, the zoo was organized into what Wikenhauser calls “villages.” Self-contained and thematically organized, the villages allowed families to visit a few sections without feeling obligated to see the whole zoo – and thus experience something new on repeated visits. Then-director George Speidel, following the lead of zoos he’d seen in Germany, established displays emphasizing predator-prey relationships so visitors could better understand how animals lived in their own environment.
Wikenhauser would now like to upgrade this approach to incorporate the new “immersion” philosophy of zoos. Visitors would walk through an environment and encounter the animals that live there. Animals would not be separated by species, but by their different habitats. This would be beneficial for the animals, but might meet resistance from visitors, who often oppose change. When the zoo improved the giraffe exhibit, which meant decreasing an overcrowded herd of 11 down to three, this caused complaints, even though the change was clearly good for the animals.
The other major obstacle to change is a huge structure in the middle of the grounds made of gunite, a concrete-like mortar substance designed to outlast the animals it was built to house. It would be an expensive replacement project.
The zoo has already made some changes to achieve Wikenhauser’s vision. The redesigned aviary lets birds fly at liberty and restricts people to paths. Exhibit foliage in the Apes of Africa building extends into public walkways, giving visitors an idea of the primates’ natural habitat. And in the feline house, the curved walkways allow visitors to come within inches of the big cats (separated by a plate glass), heightening the sense of discovery. It’s exciting for the lions, too. They can lock their gazes onto the quick-moving toddlers right in front of their noses.
But as an old facility, with a tight budget and little space to expand, the zoo is bumping against the limits of what it can do. In 2006, when longtime resident elephant Lucy died, leaving her companion Brittany alone, Milwaukee had to make a decision about the future of the species that first brought crowds to its zoo. The AZA had recently upgraded its standards for keeping elephants, requiring that accredited zoos have at least two of them. Extremely social and living in matriarchal herds dedicated to raising their young, elephants become anxious, depressed and often dangerous when they’re alone. Some experts believe only humans are more emotional than elephants. The AZA had also warned that their next guidelines would likely require elephant exhibits to have at least three animals, including a breeding bull who usually needs a separate enclosure.
Milwaukee can handle two elephants in its facility. Surprisingly, the elephants aren’t that hard on it. (“They’re kind of dainty,” says maintenance supervisor Klatt.) But to make room for a third and a possible breeding program, says Wikenhauser, something would have to go – the wolf woods perhaps, or the bears. “Is it pachyderms at all costs?” he asks. Left with one lonely elephant, Wikenhauser decided that for the time being, rather than giving Brittany away, the zoo would find her a companion. In Brownsville, Texas, they found Ruth, who’d been on her own for a year and a half.
Lead elephant keeper Tracey Dolphin knew they needed a highly social elephant who was comfortable in small spaces and would allow Brittany to be dominant. Tall, slender and fair, with sharp features reminiscent of Meryl Streep, Dolphin likes to dramatize the elephants’ thoughts. When Ruth got off the truck in Milwaukee, sniffed the smell of Brittany and realized she wasn’t alone, she trumpeted, Dolphin recalls. “Ruth was like, ‘Oh my God! There’s another elephant here!’” Though they were in separate stalls and hadn’t seen each other yet, the pachyderms began to rumble back and forth. “Who knows what stories they had to tell,” Dolphin says. When they did finally meet, the dominant though diminutive Brittany was a little shocked by Ruth’s size. “She was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re big. I’m queen, but you’re big.’ ”
Milwaukee manages its elephants using “protected contact,” meaning that neither Dolphin nor anyone else is ever inside the stalls with the animals. All contact happens between widely spaced bars, and until they know Ruth better, they won’t even be within reach of her powerful trunk. Elephants are so sensitive and smart, they can pick up very subtle cues. If, for instance, zookeepers flinch when Ruth reaches for them, Ruth would learn she scares her keepers. It’s not unlike the way in which Babe, the deceased elephant who long reigned in Milwaukee, learned to spray visitors with water. Outside one day, having her bath, she accidentally sprayed the crowd. When they cheered, they reinforced the behavior. Soon, it was impossible to keep her from doing it, and getting sprayed by Babe became a popular thrill for visitors to the zoo.
After their morning baths, the elephants begin a day full of “enrichment” activities. The keepers drag big logs into the two stalls and stash special treats like grapes and bananas in secret places for the elephants to find. Finished with the treats, Ruth shakes the building by lifting her log and pounding one end on the floor while making a thick, gurgling sound. “She rumbles when she’s happy,” says Dolphin. “And she’s happy with her log.” Dolphin watches Ruth, wondering if the elephant will toss that log over the top of her stall. Ruth has already been reminding Brittany of naughty tricks the keepers hoped Brittany had forgotten, like flinging poop up onto the ceiling.
After log play, Dolphin throws out some hay for lunch. Because they’re so smart and social, Dolphin doesn’t like the elephants to go more than an hour without some kind of activity. She’s also closely monitoring how the relationship between the girls is developing. Ruth, Dolphin explains, “lives to touch Brittany,” but Brittany will only tolerate so much of it. As the two elephants gather at their hay pile, Ruth’s long trunk snakes out toward Brittany, roaming lightly over her body. Dolphin laughs and speaks for Ruth: “It’s noontime. I must touch you.” Brittany stands this for a while, and then, with a quick flap of her ears and a subtle shift of weight, informs Ruth that touching time is over. Ruth will have to wait until tomorrow for more, but for now, she’s happy.
But Wikenhauser worries about the situation. He’s hoping the AZA will understand Milwaukee can keep two elephants very happy and let them live out their years here. But will they? The man who oversees the AZA’s elephant guidelines, Mike Keele of the Oregon Zoo, tells Milwaukee Magazinehe won’t insist Milwaukee meet the new standard. “We would want them to strive toward that, but we would understand if they couldn’t.” If zoos like Oregon’s continue to be as successful breeding elephants, they’ll create a need for others like Milwaukee’s to take animals that don’t need to reproduce, like Ruth and Brittany. Milwaukee is doing exactly what it should be doing, says Keele. They’re serving the species “from the animal welfare aspect, providing a place for companionship.” Milwaukee, he adds, is “a good example of a zoo that is taking a critical look at their program,” and seeking improvements.
Wikenhauser has a soft spot for elephants because he started out in 1973 as an elephant keeper. On the southern edge of the zoo, he points to Lucy’s grave, unidentifiable except for the sunken ground. Not many zoo animals end up buried here because their remains are usually shipped somewhere for research. A Milwaukee dentist who has dedicated his career to improving dental care for captive animals gets their teeth and jaws. Some researchers want DNA samples of animals. When one of the bonobos died recently, Rafert called his contacts to see if her organs could help anyone. What remains of the animals is cremated, but occasionally they are buried on the grounds. Beehler notes it is done without sentiment or ceremony, and the location is mapped because the animals might still prove useful some day, even in decay.
In fact, paleontologists interested in researching how elephants decompose have already made repeated requests to excavate and rebury Lucy. But Wikenhauser is reluctant. He shrugs, considering the scrubby, unmarked woodland where an elephant he knew for 33 years now rests. “I don’t know,” he says, shrugging. “It might be too much.”
If the zookeepers develop bonds with the animals, so do the visitors. They sometimes send letters and even drawings to the zoo that express their feelings. Inside the break room in the elephant barn, staffers have tacked up a child’s sketch they received shortly after Babe died. Dolphin has kept the artwork because it reminds her that the zoo is making a difference by teaching visitors to value the animals. An elephant’s head peeks out from a bed of puffy clouds, her trunk reaching down to touch that of another elephant, who is stretching upward with her own trunk. “Don’t worry Lucy,” the message says. “Babe is always with you in your heart.”
Susan Nusser is a freelance writer for Milwaukee Magazine. She may be reached via letters@milwaukeemagazine.com.
