AILING TINKERBELLE IS PUT TO DEATH, Foot woes too much for popular elephant

- Patricia Yollin, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, March 26, 2005

In the final moments, she had a chain to play with and sugar cane to eat.

And then Tinkerbelle was put to sleep -- a sad and quiet end to the life of an Asian elephant who had charmed San Francisco Zoo visitors for more than three decades before turning into one of the most political animals in the country.

The 39-year-old pachyderm was euthanized early Thursday afternoon after collapsing at the Sierra foothills sanctuary she moved to in November.

"We've all known that her condition was what I guess you'd call terminal, " said Pat Derby, founder of the Performing Animal Welfare Society, which runs the Ark 2000 refuge in San Andreas. "I had hoped that she'd have a year or two."

Bob Jenkins, director of animal care and conservation at the San Francisco Zoo, said Tinkerbelle was suffering from degenerative joint disease and chronic problems with her feet. A necropsy was conducted Friday to determine the exact cause of death.

Tinkerbelle's move to the sanctuary was one of the milestones in what might be called San Francisco's Year of the Elephant.

Her relocation climaxed almost nine months of bile-filled debate over whether she and Lulu, an African elephant, should remain at the San Francisco Zoo, move to another zoo or go to a sanctuary.

The uproar resulted from the deaths of two other elephants -- Calle and Maybelle -- last spring.

In time, the controversy attracted national attention and eventually involved animal rights activists, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA), which threatened to remove the zoo's accreditation for defying its recommendation to ship the two pachyderms to another zoo instead of the sanctuary.

Two weeks ago, Lulu finally moved to the 2,300-acre sanctuary in Calaveras County -- effectively ending the San Francisco Zoo's elephant program after eight decades. And last week the AZA granted the zoo a year's reprieve in its quest to stay accredited.

Tinkerbelle's keepers had spent months training her for the move. The 8, 000-pound pachyderm arrived at the sanctuary Nov. 28 after an uneventful trailer trip that took 3 1/2 hours.

Despite the hills and lakes -- and the presence of three other Asian elephants -- the move was still an adjustment. For much of December she ate little, balked at taking painkillers and lost weight.

Derby called in veterinarians from around the country. They all said the same thing: Tinkerbelle's feet were not fixable. Too many years of concrete had taken their toll.

"New Year's Eve was the worst day of my life," Derby said. "She wasn't eating well. And I couldn't get her meds into her."

But on New Year's Day, Tinkerbelle started eating again. And Derby's husband, Ed Stewart, built her a foot bath.

"She loved that darn foot bath," Derby said. "And she'd play and eat and throw dirt and mud."

Derby didn't allow the frail and wobbly Tinkerbelle to mingle with Annie, Rebecca and Minnie because she worried that they might bump her or knock her down. However, she could nestle next to them through an open fence.

"She and Annie would eat hay and talk and rumble and do elephant things together," Derby said. "Tinkerbelle was the noisiest one in the barn."

Still, Derby knew by then that Tinkerbelle's feet would never recover and had come to regard her as a "hospice patient."

On Thursday morning, Derby said, Tinkerbelle had taken medicine hidden in some Fig Newtons, her favorite treat, and starting walking toward a hallway on her way outside.

"She just sort of went down," Derby said. "She got up, but we were quite concerned."

Derby called the sanctuary's vet. Tinkerbelle headed toward an open gate before falling again. The vet saw that the pads cushioning her feet had slipped off, exposing the bone.

The elephant didn't seem stressed and didn't fight to get up, said Derby, who added that she no longer could have stood on her feet.

"She would have been walking on bone," Derby said. "It was so horrible."

But the day before had been one of Tinkerbelle's best.

"She was trumpeting in the bath, playing with her toys and eating like a little pig," Derby said.

On Friday, in both San Andreas and San Francisco, there was despondence and surprise.

"Although we knew this moment in time would come sometime, it's still sad when it comes," said zoo official Jenkins.

He said it was as if a beloved family member had finally succumbed after fighting a chronic and debilitating illness.

Tinkerbelle was born in Thailand and moved to San Francisco when she was 2 years old. It would be another 36 years before she'd have to leave.

Asked if the stress of the move might have played a role in Tinkerbelle's demise, Jenkins said, "Moving is always a risk."

The latent side effects included getting acclimated to a new area, new procedures, new elephants.

"The condition she was suffering from probably started 38 years ago, when it was standard to keep elephants on concrete," Jenkins said. "Those decisions were made by my forebears."

Derby said elephants just shouldn't be in captivity.

"I don't think we can ever do enough," she said. "I get these elephants, and I try everything -- but you can't give them the wild. That's what they need."

In the wild, an Asian elephant's life span ranges between 50 and 70 years. In captivity, they can live into their late 40s and early 50s.

Elliot Katz, president of In Defense of Animals, said his Mill Valley organization had been pushing to get elephants out of San Francisco for five years.

"It's just a damn shame that the zoo waited so long to transfer Tinkerbelle to the poor sanctuary," Katz said. "It's a downhill slope once the foot is rotting away. These elephants' feet were never made to stand on unyielding surfaces like concrete. It takes its time, but it's definitely a death sentence. "

Back in San Andreas, Derby said she was glad that Tinkerbelle had enjoyed her final months.

"She had an opportunity to feel good and play and be outside in the air," she said. "She started grazing and eating clover and having a relationship with the other elephants. She had that before she died."

Derby said all three Asian elephants had clustered together after Tinkerbelle slipped away, which is something they never do. And fellow San Franciscan Lulu was "quite upset."

"Last night, they could all sense it," Derby said Friday afternoon. "Elephants know."