Unlikely Friendships - Jennifer S. Holland [10]
Kookaburras are known for their call: The birds will throw back their heads and out will fly a high-pitched cackle that could easily be taken for hysterical human laughter. “When the adults kick off laughing, they can be heard all over the park,” Lorraine says. But in youth, the birds have little to say. So far Kookie, despite the circus of activity in his pen, only makes a back-of-the-throat gurgling noise, she says. Perhaps soon he’ll let loose with his first wild guffaw, giving his little teal friends a feather-raising surprise.
{TENNESSEE, U.S.A., 2009}
The Elephant and the Stray Dog
ASIAN ELEPHANT
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Proboscidae
FAMILY: Elephantidae
GENUS: Elephas
SPECIES: Elephas maximus
THE ELEPHANT SANCTUARY
Located in Hohenwald, Tennessee, the Elephant Sanctuaryis the largest natural-habitat refuge in the U.S. designed specifically for old or sick Asian and African elephants.
At the Elephant Santuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, elephants brought together from different parts of the world tend to find a friend among the masses—not surprising for social animals used to life in a herd. Stray dogs, common on sanctuary property, typically ignore the elephants, remaining solo or pairing off with their own kind. Then came a female elephant named Tarra and a male dog named Bella to break the mold.
Stepping over social traditions, these two intelligent mammals found each other, then rarely parted. The gentle giant and the chubby mutt ate, drank, and slept in tandem. Tarra’s tree-trunk legs towered over her canine friend’s head, but the two were content as long as they were side by side.
Then Bella the dog grew ill, and the staff of the sanctuary took him inside to care for him. Tarra seemed distressed and stayed near the house where Bella lay as if holding vigil for him. For many days, as Bella slowly recovered, Tarra waited. Finally, the two were reunited. Tarra caressed Bella with her trunk and trumpeted, stamping her feet. Bella, all dog, wiggled his whole body in excitement, tongue and tail in a nonstop wag as he rolled on the ground.
And, in a most remarkable moment, Tarra lifted one immense foot into the air and carefully rubbed the belly of her friend.
Renowned biologist Joyce Poole, who may have logged more hours watching elephants be elephants than anyone on Earth, recalls meeting the pair on a visit to the facility. “I was fortunate to get up close and personal, to see Tarra with both Bella and another dog she’d befriended. She kept trying to cradle the dogs with her trunk. It was delightful to see.” But to Poole, such a friendship isn’t all that surprising. “We know from our work with elephants, and from our own relationships with dogs, that both animals are very emotional and form close bonds,” she says. In the wild, elephants are loyal to tight-knit groups under the influence of a matriarch. They not only adopt one another’s young, they even mourn their dead. An elephant like Tarra, Poole says, who grew up with a mix of role models and was exposed to other species, “has simply shifted that attachment to another kind of animal.”
Like Dr. Seuss’s famously committed cartoon elephant Horton, who sat in for a wayward mother bird to hatch her egg, it appears that Tarra was “faithful, 100 percent!”
{ILLINOIS, U.S.A., 2010}
The Ferrets and the Big Dogs
FERRET
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Carnivora
FAMILY: Mustelidae
GENUS: Mustela
SPECIES: Mustela putorius furo
Laurie Maxwell is a consummate dog lover. And she isn’t afraid to take on some big ones. Not long ago, two powerful pit bulls and a roll of muscle disguised as a bulldog shared her home. But being of “the more mayhem the merrier” camp when it comes to animals, Laurie