Saturday, December 17, 2005

Male elephants

I received several questions regarding certain male elephants and it's easier to reply this way.
Eloise Berchtold had 5 big Asian males she worked that were owned by Morgan Berry, "Teak", "Thai", "Tunga", "Buddah" and "Raunchy" (Ranchipur).
"Teak" as we know died in the Circus Gatini incident in 1978.
"Buddah" the following year after fatally attacking Berry.
"Raunchy" went to the San Diego Zoo in 1980.
"Thai" went to the Houston Zoo the same year.
"Tunga" to the Portland Zoo and I think that today he is the breeding male at the Cuneo farm.

You are right Vargas did indeed buy a number of elephants from Gene Holter and the big male you mention was named "Colonel" by Wally Ross after my dad. It later became "Colonel Joe" and his ownership today remains rather obscure but he is appearing with Circus Krone in Germany.

Posted by Buckles at 12/17/2005 09:20:00 AM

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Buckles thank you, I often wondered just what happened to the Morgan Berry herd. Buddah was always going after somebody.Not long after Eloise started working the act we were in Flag Staff Arz with the Miller-Johnson show as we were exiting the Big Top Buddah hit her,from behind and knocked her head over heals about 20 feet. Morgan stopped him just as he was about to do a headstand on her, as she landed face down. He had small tusk but made it up with a bad temper.He had a large dent in his forhead ,Morgan often said that he thought maybe his brain was not right.

17 December, 2005 13:52
Anonymous said...

What the h*ck,were they thinking anyway?
Five male elephants?
All either going through or well into puberty?
Dont they read books?
BTW Did any of you watch that show on the National Geographic Channel
the other day,
Elephants:The Dark Side?
They showed a segment about temple elephants going into musth.
Reportly seven of the temple elephants had killed their mahouts.
But they still kept them.
Also it mentioned that mahouts had drinking problems because of the constant stress of making the elephants comfrtable.

17 December, 2005 18:36
Anonymous said...

You saw a TV program? This gives you the right to judge the people who have made elephants their lifes passion. They wrote the books on elephants. They choose to work with these elephants and paid with their lives. That comes with the work. Eloise was my teacher and idol. You watch what you say about her, anonymous. You are bad mouthing the wrong group of people here.

17 December, 2005 22:00
Buckles said...

I have been corrected inasmuch as "Tunga" has been dead for 5 or 6 years.

18 December, 2005 00:30
Anonymous said...

Eloise was the best thear was, she helped me many times. The circus world lost a great trainer with her death. She helped me train a all male lion act over the telephone, Talked to her every day, then before I could take it on the road, Morgan Berry talked me into selling it to a man he knew looking for a act. I was young it seamed like a lot of money. I sold the act and Eloise got mad as hell, she did't talk to me for months.

18 December, 2005 01:17
Anonymous said...

truckerdonp, I had to watch an ignorant ass hole mistreat a health problem with the leopard that was Eloises pet. I told them what was the matter and they did not listen to me. I was just a girl. The leopard was the main performer that did the tricks. Kim died so, so did the cage act. Stupid know nothing people have done more damage to animals then any circus person. The shame of it is the person telling the vet what was wrong was supposed to be a real hot shot animal person with the circus. I had lived with this animal for two years. I knew what was wrong, but these people would not listen to a girl. I am surprised Eloise ever talked to you again. I never talked to this man again and I hate him to this day. My pardner told me not to interfear at the time. You better believe I interfear everytime I see an injustise to an animal now. Makes my blood boil just thinking of this event.

18 December, 2005 10:22
Anonymous said...

The building in Winnipeg, like many others, has a large hall running underthe seats. In that building on the front end was a coffee shop w/ a single door w/ full glass. At this time it was full of performers having lunch. Now in the back end, Eloise was bringing her young elephants in, George Hannefords English Bulldog barked and off they went down the hall. When they rounded the corner and saw the light of the coffee shop door they decided to go in there. You know the little opening where the cook hands out the food to the waitress, there were about 30 people trying to go through it into the kitchen. When the elephants hit the door it broke out the bottom 3/4 and left a piece at the top shaped like a guiatine, Dianne Hanneford (Moyer) walked over and leaned out to see if all was clear, she then stepped through the door just before the glass slid swiftly down the tracks.That could have hurt!

18 December, 2005 14:03
Anonymous said...

I was visiting Jimmy Hall and others at the Indianapolis Shrine date held at the Fairgrounds Coliseum. Five rings of elephants, Bert Pettus' Castle herd in two rings, Diano elephants w/ Tommy in the center, M. Berry w/ five males, and Eloise with three Africans at the end nearest the barn. The Africans had run off the past week in Columbus so here they wouldn't have far to go. Jimmy and I were watching Morgan's act, the largest were about 7 ft. tall at this time. Shortly after the acts began we noticed the third elephant quietly backout of the ring. Morgan kept on working the others. The young bull was confused and began to run amouk, first into the Diano ring. Lee Keener zapped him with a hot shot, then he proceeded to Bauers' sway poles flipping a few props around. He then ran off the performance floor. The bull was in the narrow aisle under the seats, partly knocking down a rest room wall (imagine being there)and then running the lenght of the building -- not touching a sole. I had gone out to see what was going on in time to hear Irwin H. yell,"lookout Jimmy he's coming." He was! He headed into the barn, which also contained some amusement rides, ran for the Zoppe horses until Roger through some trappings at him. He then headed for the picket line. Throughout it all, Morgan kept working the act.

A few months later in Belleville,IL I saw Morgan and Eloise. She proceeded to chastise me for spreading rumors that the elephants ran in Columbus and Indy. I pleaded guilty to spreading the Columbus tale but told her was was a witness to Indianapolis -- we both dropped the issue.

Eloise was always nice to me and a very dedicated animal person. She was always doing something unusual. When Gunther came over there was a story that if anyone could train a sloth, it would be GWW. Buckles said that was wrong,"we all know that trainer would be Eloise."

18 December, 2005 16:08
Anonymous said...

Tunga died in 1996.
Also I had heard that "Thai" killed one of the zoo keepers
at the Houston zoo in 1986.

20 December, 2005 18:00
Anonymous said...

Im not bad mouthing anyone.
Im just saying,that George"Slim"Lewis even mentioned in his up-dated book I LOVED ROGUES,published in 1979,that he was concerned about the increse in importation of male elephants
during the 1960's,which were all starting to sexually maturing and going through musth in the 1970's.
Remember the incident in Corsicana Texas in October 1929?
After that bad publicity and probably more for insurance purposes ,just about all the circus's started to get rid of their male elephants.They were either killed or sent to zoo's where they usually had to be killed later.

20 December, 2005 18:04
Anonymous said...

Anonymous. Is your goal in life to inform the world of all the elephant misfortunes? It really reads like you are gloating about the deaths of these wonderful animals. Is that your intent? I may be taking this wrong, but I really think you are not a circus person. Male elephants are like females with PMS. They can just do more damage. Except for me as I could really do some damage. Males are only being natural with what mother nature gave them. All animals on this earth have their bad days. You make it read like men are a bunch of gun happy killers, which is the farthest thing from their mind. You do not kill such valuable animals on a whim. We do not spend $10,000 for an elephant just to kill it.

20 December, 2005 20:07
Anonymous said...

Im not a scientist,but surely in no way could you compare a grown 5 ton male elephant in musth(which means to go mad in the Indian language)to a woman with PMS!!!

31 December, 2005 16:16

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