A Tribute to Boy

I was asked to write a tribute/obituary to Boy for an internet based zoo group. I've never had to write an obituary for a person, let alone an elephant. It was difficult to write about Boy and I can't begin to imagine how much it hurts to write about a person that you care about.

The photos at the end were taken by someone at Kyiv Zoo on the day before Boy died.

Boy was an Asiatic Bull elephant, born in approximately 1970. The records don’t say where, but we speculate that he was wild caught. He moved to Kyiv Zoo in the early 1970’s from Rostock.
Although Boy had been on his own for quite a few years, previously he had two female companions, he bred once with the first one.
Throughout the years Boy was at Kyiv Zoo the country of Ukraine changed greatly, notably it experienced the tragic nuclear disaster at Chornobyl, and also Ukraine became independent, leading to the problems associated with becoming a new country and the changes from communism to capitalism. As a city run zoo, these changes affected Boy, the zoo staff and all the other animals.
Boy was extremely special to the people of Kyiv; he grew up alongside them to become probably the biggest Asian bull in Europe (3.45 metres) and was a firm favourite with many, including the Mayor of Kyiv who was his Guardian and funded many of the recent developments to Boy’s enclosure.
Boy had a reputation as an aggressive dangerous animal; he killed one keeper and injured a few others.
He was plagued with health problems following tusk extractions due to breaking them. His feet were also of great concern. Because of these factors vets and other elephant experts travelled around the world to assist and provide advice, many giving their time and skills voluntarily. Boy had a great many friends and I’m so grateful to all of them.
When I first met Boy he wasn’t doing so well. The zoo was in financial trouble due to the economic crisis and other political issues. He needed help with his behaviour, nutrition and foot-care. I asked the elephant zoo community for help and it came flooding in. People gave me their time and expertise freely to help me redesign Boy’s enclosure, develop an enrichment programme and take him from a non-contact situation into a Protected Contact Operant Conditioning programme. Boy and his keepers took to this new system like ducks to water.
Boy was a special animal to me, I found him to be quick thinking, hard working and great to be around. He made me learn an awful lot about elephants. There’s just something wonderful about tilting your head up and gazing into the eyes of a huge animal and knowing that you both understand that when he puts his head or foot on the target stick he’s going to get a big reward.

Boy collapsed and died in the morning on Monday 26th April 2010. His death seems to have been very quick. Initial signs indicate poisoning, and known animal rights activists are suspected, a necropsy will be carried out.

The End

I recieved a very sad email today from Kyiv Zoo.

Boy is dead.

He died early this morning, very suddenly.

The vets suspect that he has been poisoned.

I would like to thank all the wonderful people all over the world who helped me change Boy's life. We gave him a happy end to his life and I wouldn't have been able to do anything without your assistance and knowledge.

People gave their time freely to me, answering questions, sending photos and ideas for enrichment, helping me with the designs for the enclosure modifications, and the generous donations that helped me go to Elephant School in Hamburg. You all made it possible to do something wonderful for my elephant.

Boy had a difficult life, he was lonely and had some health problems. Despite all this, he was willing to work and train with me. I think he craved attention.

Boy helped me a lot too.

He was an amazing animal and I miss him.

London

It’s been ages since I last wrote anything. Things have changed tremendously and I don’t know where to start. I think that’s why I’ve left it so long, but it just gets harder to know what to write.
Steve and I are no longer in Ukraine and have finished working at Kyiv Zoo. We had a few problems with our paperwork, and our work permits and visas were not renewed.
It was very sad to leave as we feel that the zoo was making real progress. We have left behind some wonderful people – friends, zoologists and conservationists. Steve and I will always support the work of Kyiv Zoo and will provide advice and act as consultants to them in the future.
Steve was pleased to have completed the lynx enclosure, and in the next few weeks a male lynx will be sent to Kyiv Zoo to begin a new blood line for the conservation breeding programme, an important achievement for both Steve and Kyiv Zoo.
With my elephant Boy it’s a bit different. I know that I made some hugely significant changes to enhance his welfare but I didn’t achieve what I planned in terms of his training. I hope that the vets continue my work and train Boy for his footcare. A lot of people from around the world supported me with my work with Boy and I am so extremely grateful as I wouldn’t have been able to do anything for Boy without them. I miss working with Boy, he was very forgiving and prepared to work with me.

I’m finding it good to be back in the UK, although it is also quite funny. On the last day in Kyiv the temperature was about -25°C at the airport and thick heavy snow. So, during the snow in the UK in January I didn’t find it too cold at all.

Since being back I’ve been catching up with friends and family which has been lovely. I’ve neglected too many people and it’s time to start seeing everyone again.

I’ve also been to a few zoos since being back; Dublin, Marwell, Twycross, Whipsnade, Rare Species Conservation Centre, Port Lympne and Dudley. I have photos from some of these so I’ll try and write something about these zoos soon.

Winter has arrived

Last weekend started with our second visit to the Kyiv Expats new social group – the First Friday Club. The idea is that the first Friday of every month the group meets at a different bar in Kyiv for some drinking and general chat. This time was at a bar called Route 66, an American-biker themed bar not too far from where we live. We had a nice evening, met lots of people and listened to some good live music.
Steve’s lynx enclosure is now fully finished and the gorgeous Carpathian Lynx has been enjoying very much. The last work Steve had to do in the enclosure was train the staff to find any faults in the fence and be able to fix them. So, he spent an interesting afternoon trying to break the fence so it could be repaired – this was actually quite difficult because the fence has been extremely well constructed and was consequently extremely hard to create faults in!
The temperature has dropped a lot over this week, its currently getting close to -10°C (during the day, even colder at night) which is pretty crazy. I’m so cold and having to wear nearly all my clothes at the same time I don’t remember ever being somewhere this cold before – I’m sure it never gets to these temperatures during the day in the UK. It’s so cold outside that your nose just starts running and it makes your eyes hurt – even with thick gloves your fingers start to ache. I think everyone here except for Steve and I have gone for the “wear as much fur as possible” option, which may actually be quite sensible under the circumstances. No one is wearing bright sparkly clothes anymore, like in the summer. Everyone is in dark clothes and excessive fur trimmings, but the girls are all still in very very high heel shoes!
The snow started to fall properly on Monday morning, there hasn’t been too much yet – just a fairly thin covering over everything. It’s been so cold that it hasn’t melted during the week so every day the layer gets a bit thicker over the frozen puddles – so slippery!
We’ve had the elephant outside for his exercises every day this week even during the snow. He’s been a bit curious about it all – investigating the snow with his trunk but it doesn’t seem to have bothered him at all. The exercising is going well and although it’s still early days I think I can see some muscles starting to build up properly on his legs.
As we have been doing a lot of work in and around the elephant house I’ve been able to closely watch Boy and was interested in how tall he was. I found a mark on the wall that corresponded to his shoulder height (you measure elephants like horses – height at the withers) and measured him. I read in a book whilst I was at elephant school that Boy was 3.25 metres ten years ago, and since then he has grown to 3.45 metres. Possibly he is now the tallest bull elephant in Europe?
We had some very big meetings this week with zoo staff and representatives from the Kyiv Institute of Zoology and various environmental NGOs. These were very long and important meetings as we are starting to work on creating legislation for Ukraine to deal with zoos, wild animals and their conservation. There are some laws already but they are very basic and mostly deal with domestic animals and livestock and therefore aren’t quite relevant to zoos and conservation. I’ve never written any governmental legislation before and it’s pretty difficult when working in a different language with a different culture towards these things.
The zoo has just completed the first part of a new visitor education programme – a stork and native wildlife education centre. This is in a part of the zoo where we have some beautiful lakes and naturally forested area. So far invertebrate, bird and bat boxes have been installed along with a display of artificial stork nests from all regions of Ukraine – these are a familiar sight in villages across the country. When completed, this area will have a nature trail, a stork museum and conservation centre and lots of activities for children. We’re really pleased with this work and think the visitors will like it a lot.

Boy in his first snow

From the office window

Hippo in the warm

Elephant exercise in the snow

Siberian Tiger feeling at home

Rhino bench

The zoo's other "elephants" in the children's playground

Completed Lynx Enclosure

Bird valley enclosure

Carpathian Lynx in her completed enclosure

Having a good scratch

Frozen Wildlife Area

Stork Nest Display

Invertebrate, Bird and Bat box display

Bee Nest Box

Don't forget the rhino

This week has been more of the same at the elephant enclosure, but the weather is starting to deteriorate. I don’t think we’ve seen the sun all week as it’s been foggy, drizzly and pretty cold. But we are not people to be put off by bad weather (unlike some of the sulky keepers!) and have all been back out at the elephant sand enclosure digging the rest of the sand over. It’s a pretty big achievement to actually dig the whole area by hand. My elephant friends at other zoos all have nice diggers to do the job for them (slight case of jealousy!). Once we finished digging the enclosure we raked it thoroughly, which the keepers must now do every day and we dug some of the sand into big hills for Boy to play with. It looked a bit like an elephant sized Zen Garden.
Now that the sand is much softer, Boy has been able to start expressing some more elephant behaviours. It’s much easier for him to pick up sand for dust bathing but even better is digging. I hoped that once the sand was loosened Boy would have a little dig and was so pleased when I found the first hole that he dug in the enclosure. Now he is digging regularly to find hidden food, clean his feet and get sand for dust bathing with.
Boy has also been exercised every day this week, but not by us. It’s been taken over by the vets and the keepers, which is great to see. They have also started talking to him more as he really needs the interactions.
We moved from the outdoor area to the inside enclosure with our cleaning programme. Whilst Boy was outside we had a good opportunity to work indoors. We have scrubbed Boy’s enclosure from top to bottom and shown the workers the standards that we want maintained. The food preparation area was also a big priority – it just wasn’t being kept clean enough. It’s not a nice area, it needs new tiles, but that’s no excuse for not keeping it clean, so we set everyone to work – taking everything out, scrubbing and bleaching until everything was clean. The vets even donated a new table for chopping food. I think it went really well as the keepers were arguing over where the best place was to put the table. That shows pride and thought in what they are doing. I am confident they will keep it hygienic now.
So, with the elephant spring clean almost complete, Steve and I turned our attentions to the next animal on the elephant section – our lovely old rhinoceros. Same routine here; digging over an extremely compacted sand enclosure by hand and then scrubbing out a very dirty water pool. Fortunately for us, the rhino enclosure is considerably smaller than the elephant so we could get most of the work done in two days.
Steve particularly enjoyed playing (sorry, Working) with the power washer and discovered that the indoor enclosure was not actually grey, but green and the wooden boards where the rhino sleeps were really a lovely light brown colour!

Boy coming to start his exercise routine

One of the keepers throwing a carrot for Boy to collect

Boy dug this hole

Showing the contrasts between the compacted sand, dug sand and raked sand

You can almost see the layers of compaction here

Nicely raked Zen Garden with small hills

Finished digging at last

Boy investigating a sand hill

We put Boy's log in the wrong place so he decided to move it

Moving

Moving

Moving

Thats where he wanted it

Some indoor food enrichment for Boy

Collecting it all

Very dirty rhino pool

Nice clean rhino yard

Steve with the clean rhino pool

Rhino enjoying her refreshed enclosure

Nice clean rhino bed

How to exercise an elephant

So, since I got back I took some time to relax and unpack. The first day back at work I spent catching up on two weeks’ worth of emails and general zoo happenings. I also was able to start to focus on what I had learnt at elephant school and how to apply it to my lovely elephant.
So, on Tuesday with the aid of Steve, we descended on the elephant enclosure and the poor terrified workers and unleashed “Operation слон - Spring Clean”! Steve started with the concrete outdoor yard, it was covered with mud, leaves and sand, and our red safety lines couldn’t be seen. We managed to find one proper broom and a squeegee and eventually managed to get a hose pipe long enough to reach the yard. Steve swept, hosed and squeegeed for hours until it was sparkling clean. I started on the sand outdoor enclosure. I don’t think the sand has ever been changed or dug over, it was packed down completely solid. So I started digging at one end of the enclosure, just to turn the sand over and try to refresh it a bit. Also by loosening the sand it may give Boy the possibility of digging, which is a natural behaviour that I want to encourage. We all worked for most of the day in the outdoor enclosure – well, Steve and I worked but the keepers mostly moaned and whinged about having to do some work. They started to work after we told them that they sounded like little old ladies, except that little old ladies dig better than they do! We managed to get about a third of the enclosure done, which was pretty good.
The other new thing I have introduced since elephant school is an exercise regime for Boy. He was very fat, but after we changed his diet earlier in the year he began to slowly lose the weight. The problem now is that under where the fat was he has little or no muscle mass. So, I need to get him properly fit. The question is – how do you exercise a huge elephant? What I decided to do was to rather than scatter his lunch around the enclosure (which I used to do) I would throw it for him a couple of pieces at a time so he would have to walk from one end of the enclosure to the other to get the food (elephants can walk huge distances in the wild). He really didn’t like this idea at first and looked very sad about it but after a few throws he got the idea and trotted along to collect his carrots! I also realised that I could take this one stage further. We were told at elephant school that having the opportunity to climb was great for elephants – another good natural behaviour. Our elephant swimming pool is empty at the moment and has big elephant sized steps down into it. By throwing food into the pool I could encourage Boy to go down and then climb back up again – fantastic exercise for him. I’m introducing this very slowly as it requires a lot of energy for Boy and I don’t want to tire him out completely, just a few times every day and then more as he gets fitter. I imagine that Boy was pretty tired after all his exercise but nowhere near as tired as I was, I ached all over and my hands were covered in blisters from all the digging!
The next day we were back at the elephant enclosure, which was a great disappointment to all the workers! We carried on digging the sand (and they moaned again) and someone managed to find a power-washer from somewhere in the zoo so we spent several hours trying to get that set up. We started power-washing the pool – lots of mud, leaves and sand that needed to be removed as it was a bit slippery and therefore not so safe for elephant exercise. We exercised Boy again, which he seemed to enjoy, although perhaps it’s just having a lot of attention that pleased him. We’ve been trying to get the workers to talk to him when they are near him, which they are gradually starting to do. After Boy’s workout we left him outside and we went in to make a start on his indoor area. Usually this is just swept or brushed with a bit of water. We took the power-hose and removed vast amounts of muck from the floor and walls. It’s very satisfying work! In the afternoon we did some more elephant exercise as we had a TV news crew in who wanted to see what was happening. Again, I only ever seem to get interviewed on TV when I am tired and covered in mud, water and elephant poo!
The rest of the week was much the same, although the workers seemed resigned to the fact that they would be digging and raking and cleaning the elephant enclosure, which was a very nice development. By the end of Friday I ached all over and my multiple blisters were bleeding everywhere – one of the shovels will never be the same again!
It does seem to have paid off so far. Over the weekend we saw the keepers raking the sand enclosure and the vets were exercising the elephant – all good!

Sand that I dug over (after elephant has walked on it)

2 days of sand digging

Steve's lovely clean yard

Me power-washing the pool steps

Boy climbing down the steps for exercise

Boy at the bottom of the pool

Climbing back up again