Ziggy (elephant)

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Ziggy (* around 1917 ; † October 27 or 28, 1975 ) was an Asian elephant . At the time of his death, he was believed to be the largest and oldest Asian elephant kept in the United States . He then weighed about 13,000 pounds and was ten feet tall.

Life

When exactly Ziggy, who was initially called Herman , was born is unknown. It was captured as a cub and shipped to the United States, where it was owned by Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey . They sold the elephant in 1922 to Florence Ziegfeld , after whom it was later named. Ziegfeld gave the elephant calf to his daughter Patricia for her sixth birthday, but soon discovered that Ziggy was unsuitable as a pet and gave it back to the showmen. Ziggy then came into the hands of Leopold von Singer , who let him perform with his Singer's Midgets under the care of the short trainer Captain Charlie Becker and another normal trainer and passed it on to the zoo in Leipzig in 1927 , from where he returned a year later took me on tour. Ziggy learned to play a song on the harmonica, to smoke and to dance at Singer's Midgets. He stayed with Singer's troop until July 1936. Then the Singer's Midgets parted with four of their dangerous elephants. Ziggy came to the Brookfield Zoo , where he lived the rest of his life. After attacking his keeper in the Musth in 1941 , he spent almost 30 years chained inside the elephant house. It was not until 1970 that he was allowed to take a short walk into the fresh air again. He then owed a public campaign to the construction of a new enclosure, in which he was able to move outdoors again in his last years. After falling into a ditch from which it could not be freed for over 24 hours, the old elephant did not fully recover. He was found dead in his stable in October 1975.

Anecdotes and incidents

There are numerous anecdotes about Ziggy. As a 210-pound calf, he is said to have trampled through a greenhouse on Long Island and terrified a group of children. While on a circus tour during the Prohibition era, the elephant is said to have discovered an illegal whiskey warehouse behind a stable wall in Milwaukee , which was worth $ 60,000. The circus had to leave the city after it was found that city notables were implicated in the case. In 1936 he escaped in San Diego and is said to have grabbed a musician with his trunk and hurled it away, which allegedly led to the man's death. This incident, which z. B. is mentioned in an article about the death of the elephant in the Palm Beach Post , but is denied by other sources. Captain Charles Becker, who was sick at the time, was called to recapture the elephant. Ziggy was sold to the Brookfield Zoo for $ 800 after that incident. In the first year, nobody could get so close to him that he could have untied him and brought him into the outdoor enclosure. The elephant trainer George ("Slim") Lewis was used to get the animal under control. But on April 26, 1941, Ziggy attacked Lewis, who with a lot of luck was able to roll into the space between Ziggy's tusks when the elephant bored them into the ground, and finally escaped.

Lewis left the zoo after this incident and the elephant was chained in a stable building for the next several decades. He met his victim again only after the new zoo director Peter Crowcroft had started a campaign to renovate the elephant enclosure in the late 1960s, moved by numerous letters. In 1970, Lewis took Ziggy out into the fresh air as part of a "reconciliation event"; however, the elephant turned back after 40 minutes and withdrew into the building. Nevertheless, this action had a resounding effect. The Ziggy Fund, a foundation to build a suitable enclosure, was established and the public took an active part in the elephant's fate. Children donated money, as did soldiers in Vietnam ; a book about Ziggy, supposedly the largest elephant in the world, was published and a car dealer donated the rest, so that the bull elephant could eventually take possession of his personal outdoor enclosure, which he could no longer use. In March 1975, when he had to move into replacement quarters while renovating the indoor enclosure, he fell into an eight-foot-deep ditch, from which he could only be freed a day later. He died the following autumn.

After Ziggy's death in 1975, the question arose of what to do with the body. The zoo veterinarian warned at an early stage that the animal could probably not be removed from the building in one piece, and initially said that Ziggy might be buried on the zoo grounds and that a memorial might be given. Eventually the Field Museum in Chicago received Ziggy's bones. However, his penis was so unwieldy that it did not fit in a display case. Ziggy's remains are now in the museum's depot. A monument to Ziggy was erected at the Lizzandro Museum of Lapidary Arts in Elmhurst, Illinois . The obsidian elephant features tusks carved from Ziggy's original teeth.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Famous Elephant Ziggy Dies , in: The Palm Beach Post , October 28, 1975, p. 32
  2. ↑ a b c d e Ziggy's story on roadsideamerica.com
  3. ↑ a b c d e Betty Dunn, An Elephant Spends 30 Years in Solitary , in: Life , October 22, 1971, p. 79
  4. ↑ Ziggy's life stations
  5. ↑ a b Alexander Haufellner, Jürgen Schilfarth, Georg Schweiger: Elephants in the zoo and circus: Part 2: North America. Ed .: European Elephant Group. 1997.
  6. ↑ Ziggy's story and numerous pictures on asianelephant.net