Last Chain On Billie by Carol Bradley

Author:Carol Bradley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781250025708
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-08-28T03:24:17.284520+00:00

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THIRTEEN

SETBACKS IN ILLINOIS

One obstacle remained before the Sanctuary could truck the remaining nine Hawthorn elephants to their new home. The state of Tennessee required blood tests on the animals. So late in 2005, Blais headed to Illinois, accompanied by veterinarian Susan Mikota and Sanctuary employee Lydia Scheidler, to observe and take back with them the blood samples collected by the Hawthorn team. They expected to spend two or three days completing the task.

Blais was astounded at the condition of the Hawthorn facility. At one point in its history the barn might have been spotless, but now it was a pigsty. Cobwebs lined the interior of the dimly lit building; the piercing, fermented smell of urine and elephant dung assaulted Blais’s nostrils. Rat and mouse droppings were everywhere, including the grooms’ bedrooms, which were located down a long hallway. Some of the handlers lived in trailers parked outside. If anyone flipped on the kitchen lights after dark, they’d be greeted by a roomful of eyeballs. Blais heard stories of previous grooms coming to work falling-down drunk, dropping a little hay at the foot of each elephant and walking away. Days might go by before anyone bothered to muck out the piles of feces.

Six of the elephants were on a picket line, chained by one front leg and one rear leg, facing outward, away from the wall. At one end, Debbie and Ronnie stood side by side. Debbie, thirty-five, was one of the herd’s youngest elephants and, at 10,380 pounds, one of its biggest. She had a reputation for being dangerous. Ronnie, forty, was vocal and highly animated. She had performed for circuses since she was nine and at the age of twenty-seven had given birth to a son, Nicholas, the male elephant kept in protected contact. Debbie and Ronnie were best friends, forever caressing each other with their trunks. Next to them stood Gypsy, thirty-eight. Imported from the wild, she’d performed with Ringling and three other circuses before Cuneo bought her.

At the other end of the line was Queenie, forty-seven, the elephant Cuneo had purchased from Benson’s Wild Animal Farm in New Hampshire. Next to her were Lottie and Minnie. Lottie, forty-three, was sold to Cuneo in 1995 at the age of thirty. Minnie was forty and enormous, weighing in at 11,130 pounds. Before she was sold to the circus she was believed to have been someone’s pet. She and Lottie were tightly bonded; they stood as close to one another as they could get.

In the center of the line, stationed a bit apart from the rest, was puny Liz. At forty-nine, her trunk was partially paralyzed and she limped slightly from an infection between two toes on her right front foot. She was kept farther apart from the others to protect her rations. Given half a chance, the other elephants would devour Liz’s share of hay.

With nothing else to do to all day, the elephants swayed back and forth. They seemed to welcome human contact and no one anticipated any trouble with their blood draws.

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