Tuesday, March 18, 2014

To Ryan Easley #1


Posted by Buckles at 3/18/2014 06:20:00 PM

2 comments:

mackeytableforone said...

Hi Ryan I researched Babes history last year with help from Baraboo (yep, they had 28 Babes in their records) and the Smithsonian. Tho I'm not the last word on this particular elephant I did find the first part of her history matches the card until her ending in 1937 at age 64 in the National Zoo in Washington. She took a side trip from 1920-1922 to a zoo in Rockford Il when the townspeople withdrew support and interest then she went back to Ringling. Mr Normans from the Rockford Park District recently wrote a book about the Blackhawk Zoo. The conflicting ages, time frames etc is what caused me to really dig in on this particular Babe/Hebe as a way of honoring her hard work and service. This is the elephant that gave birth to her baby right in the middle of the street in Philly. Little Columbia almost did not survive from all of the inspection, handling and guawkers. There is an old promotional colorized post card from the zoo floating around and this gal had some very distinctive ears and stature. Anyway, thats my story and I'm sticking to it, lol and it was good to hear from you via the blog. Sara from Belvidere, now Gratiot WI

19 March, 2014 13:40
mackeytableforone said...

I retraced my notes that were lost in a recent interstate move, found a bunch of Babe/Hebe photos and can not figure how to post them here darnet! It seems the Rockford Zoo did not do very good by her, got bad feet and after two years of neglect, Ringling probably could not get them straightened out so she landed in D.C. for three years before passing. Both elephant.se, asianelephants.net and National Zoo historical photos in the search bar can tell the complete story of Babe/Hebe/Babylon, Mandarin, Gold Dust, Dunk and naughty little Columbia; all interesting reads.

20 March, 2014 16:16

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