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Hundreds of hand-drawn cards litter the conference table in a back room of the Buttonwood Park Zoo.
“Ruth … You made a lot of pepol hapey!”
“I am sorry for your lost.”
“I love you Ruth.”
First-graders from a nearby elementary school sent the latest outpouring of a city’s love and grief. The shaky crayon lines and colored pencil drawings betrayed that little hands were behind these messages.
“Don’t be sad beckus it’s ending be happy beckus it happint.”
“Thinking of you.”
One card stood out for its much-practiced, perfectly-rounded letters.
“From a child to now teacher, you have made such an impact. Your beauty and intelligence is, and will always be unmatched. Thank you for everything.”
Take a right when you enter the Buttonwood Park Zoo, walk past the North American mammals, the otters, the seals, and the bears, and you’ll arrive at the largest habitat inside one of America’s oldest zoos. There you might find a person looking up in awe, like Jean Canastra, from one of New Bedford’s most storied fishing families, and her great nephew, Paxton.
“I came here with my mother when I was a kid, and I used to bring his mother, too,” Canastra said, looking down at her great nephew, who’s not yet in kindergarten. Tears began to well for Canastra as she described the generations of memories that she created with her family in this spot. She wiped her eyes and asked a nearby keeper how Ruth was doing.
Canastra came on this cloudy and cold morning to see something majestic and mournful. She came to see the elephants.
Elephants travel in herds. Across their lifetimes, they build complex social relationships with their immediate family; then with larger “bond groups” of multiple families, up to 50 individuals; and then with even larger “clans” that contain multiple bond groups. Elephants argue through nuanced vocalizations about routes to take over hundred-mile journeys, or about how to allocate scarce food and water. And yes, they are famous for their memory. They can recognize faces and places across decades.
Since 1968, elephants have lived in New Bedford, somewhere that the world may never have intended. But these giant, wrinkly creatures have warmed the hearts of thousands of frosty New Englanders and softened them, almost unwittingly, into members of perhaps the largest, strangest, and most out-of-place elephant family now in existence.
Wherever you find yourself in the elephants’ extended family, the humans of New Bedford have begun to grieve for Ruth, the 66-year-old Asian elephant who began receiving hospice care last month to comfort her during life’s last season.
Though the zoo’s other geriatric elephant, Emily, aged 61, remains in good health, the staff at Buttonwood has said that when both elephants pass, the zoo will not seek new elephants to care for. The news about Ruth, then, signifies the imminent passing of a beloved member of New Bedford’s herd and has reminded the city that this is the end of a species here. These are the last elephants of New Bedford.
The grandest matriarchy in New Bedford
Every morning Dr. Emmy Budas, the Buttonwood veterinarian, walks again to the elephant house. In tow are plenty of treats and the most advanced elephant podiatry system that money can buy.
Budas, a Sudbury native, came to Buttonwood after several impressive fellowships and internships, including training in Zimbabwe and some large American zoos. She has worked at Buttonwood for over a year, and said, “I think I’m part of the herd by now. I want to be.” The head elephant keeper, Kay Santos, looked over at her and nodded yes.
When Ruth sees Budas coming, most days she’ll get up on her own power and wriggle into position for treatment. The machine Budas holds looks like an oversized ultrasound, but the handheld wand produces a soothing laser pulse that reduces inflammation and — it seems to the staff — pain in Ruth’s feet and other joints. There are some days where the four-ton pachyderm doesn’t feel like shuffling into position, Budas said, and that’s fine. Ruth feels like doing less and less these days. On a typical visit to the zoo, it’s unlikely a visitor will catch her walking around the yard and playing, drumming, or painting, as the elephants here have been known to do.
Instead, Ruth spends a lot of time laying down, napping, or leaning against posts and walls inside the elephant house to take pressure off her feet and legs. At 66 years old, Ruth has greatly outlived the expected age of an Asian elephant, which is about 45 years. She has led a very active life, and persistent foot problems from her pigeon-toed stance have become chronic, it seems to zoo staff. So she leans more inside the house and plays less in the yard.
“We’re aware the time is coming,” Budas said. But Ruth has committed to her own treatment plan. “She’s smart enough to know why I’m there … She puts herself into position and presents her right elbow, saying, ‘this is where I hurt today.’” Budas said Ruth also enjoys munching the alfalfa nuggets and fresh fruit snacks she gets during treatment.
The zoo’s executive director, Sarah Henry, said that Buttonwood’s advanced treatment programs are helping zoos around the country to offer better care for elephants.
Beyond the laser therapy, Henry said that Buttonwood has stood out in independent zoo assessments for successfully combining behavioral training with medical care. For example, when keepers can train an animal like Ruth to participate in care, it’s safer for the keeper, veterinarian, and animal. It’s this combination of old-school training and new-school devices that are a model for other zoos with aging elephants, Henry said.
The zoo’s ability to advance quality of care for elephants is a full-circle moment for Henry, 42, a New Bedford native who was inspired by her own relationship with Ruth and Emily to start caring for and about animals.
It’s a similar story for Shara Rapoza, 55, the zoo’s assistant director, who was raised in the city’s South End. For more than a decade, Rapoza was the head elephant keeper, and oversaw the elephants on some of their grandest adventures. Longtime New Bedford residents might remember when the elephants made the paper in 1996 for going to Dunkin’ Donuts. An incredulous reporter grilled a mostly nonplussed drive-through attendant.
“I hear there were two elephants here at the Drive-Thru window the other night.” Waitress: “Oh, yeah. They’re usually here between 11 p.m. and midnight. They come down here a lot, but I haven’t seen them in about a week.”
The waitress informed the reporter that the elephants liked plain donuts and hot chocolate, which led the newsman to declare in print, “I swear to God this happened.”
In those days, you didn’t necessarily have to go inside the zoo to see Ruth and Emily. Looser regulations from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums permitted “free contact” between animals and keepers, and sometimes even the public, all at the discretion of the keepers who knew them best. So to exercise the gentle giants, Rapoza had a habit of taking them out into Buttonwood Park for a morning stroll. They’d swim, play, and wallow in the pond. They’d wander in the nearby woods, sniffing for berries and maybe meeting a squirrel.
“Just being elephants,” Rapoza remembered. Back then people would look up while walking their dogs in the park, according to Rapoza, and say, “Oh, hi, Ruth. Hi, Emily.”
Rapoza, an ambitious member of the herd, has since worked her way up to become the zoo’s assistant director, overseeing lots of other animals and operations. This doesn’t mean she’s left the herd per se, but another staff member was promoted to head elephant keeper. That was Kay Santos, a long-serving assistant keeper who had only fallen into elephant care by chance.
Today, the soft-spoken Santos has become the elephants’ matriarch, Rapoza said.
It may or may not be a coincidence that all of the elephants’ closest companions, their “family unit” in New Bedford, are women. In the wild, elephant society is highly matriarchal, with family units, bond groups, and clans all organized around female relationships: mothers and their daughters; aunts and cousins; extended female relatives. Asian elephants have a less rigid, linear, and hierarchical social structure than their African cousins (who are as distantly related as humans and chimpanzees). So it’s possible that younger, less physically dominant females can become the head of a family.
That’s why Santos, who is quiet around people, could rise to become the individual that the others instinctively look to. Even Rapoza, who for over a decade marched alongside the elephants and would even ride on their backs, takes cues from Santos when the five-ton Emily saunters up to the fenceline.
“She’s looking for the gingko berries,” Santos says, almost whispering. And suddenly all the humans — even the reporters — begin picking through the grass for the stinking berries. Emily hoovers them up.
Santos said she preferred not to sit for an interview. When asked about her time with the elephants, she said only, “It’s been quite the journey.” Asked if the elephants have changed her life, she nodded and said yes.
Why are there elephants in New Bedford?
The Buttonwood Park Zoo was founded, according to its website, in 1894. At the time, New Bedford was a profoundly wealthy city. Moneyed enclaves around the country had just begun to open zoos — including in New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago — which were more like Victorian menageries that displayed exotic animals in cages as curiosity attractions.
Buttonwood Park itself was designed according to principles from the famed landscape architects, Olmsted, Olmsted, & Eliot, whose reputation was attached to family work on Central Park, which is also home to the country’s oldest zoo.
Today New Bedford’s zoo, and all zoos, have a much different purpose and feeling.
The public can still take a Victorian-style stroll on the grounds and admire the creatures. But the zoo’s mission no longer caters to the enjoyment of the public at the expense of the animals. Now the mission is to educate the humans and conserve and care for the animals.
The public, through donor contributions, is now the largest income source for Buttonwood’s Zoo. New Bedford’s city government also funds a significant portion of the $1.7 million budget — meaning the zoo competes with other municipal expenses like police departments and schools. Mayor Jon Mitchell, whose public life in New Bedford began as a board director at the zoo, often speaks positively about the institution and animals there. But the zoo resurfaces as a point of contention for the most hawkish public servants, including in 1995, when then city councilor Thomas Hodgson (who later served 26 years as a county sheriff) stood opposed to the zoo’s funding plan, The Standard-Times reported.
These days, the cost of caring for the elephants accounts for about half of Buttonwood’s animal expenses — a total of about $400,000 on just these two large animals, according to Henry, the executive director. That means a full year of gate admissions wouldn’t even fund the elephant expenses alone. Their large habitat, large diets, and near-constant geriatric veterinary care are by far the most expensive undertaking on the grounds. That’s part of the reason why the zoo has announced it won’t seek new elephants in the future.
Yet, for most of the last 56 years, there have been elephants in New Bedford. That’s close to half of the zoo’s time in existence. It’s about a quarter of the time the entire city has existed (from its incorporation in 1787). Across the modern era in New Bedford — the time of the elephant’s reign — many, many people have posed the question, why are there elephants in New Bedford?
The elephants’ backstories are “tragic,” Rapoza said. When Emily arrived at Buttonwood in 1968, she was four years old and newly separated from other elephants. She was purchased from what was then the newly incorporated Southwick Zoo, in Mendon, which was better known at the time as an animal dealer across New England. Through several decades, Emily grew up in Buttonwood with no contact with other elephants, which scientists now know is like growing up in solitary confinement.
Ruth arrived in 1986. She had once lived on a farm in New Hampshire, but for many years was rented out and displayed by a private owner in parades and shows. Eventually, an animal rescue league tried to recover Ruth, but her owner attempted to flee the state. The owner’s botched escape left Ruth chained to an abandoned trailer at a dump site in Danvers. She was found with partial paralysis in the middle section of her trunk — the elephant equivalent of having both partially disabled hands and a partially paralyzed face — and was brought straight to the zoo in New Bedford.
The elephants arrived during a different time. When Ruth arrived, zoos had just begun their shift towards becoming institutions of conservation, care and research. And while Buttonwood rehabilitated Ruth and socialized Emily admirably, likely today Ruth would have gone to a zoo large enough to support multi-generational herds, Rapoza said.
“We can’t cancel the past,” Rapoza said. “You look at the cards you’ve been dealt.”
The zoo’s record has its own blemishes, too. Emily once moved, in 1983, after several U.S. Department of Agriculture violations against the zoo for a too-small, “dilapidated” barn. So Emily relocated to a facility in Louisiana. And when she arrived, the already socially-isolated animal was attacked by her new elephant companions.
Emily was moved to a different enclosure, alongside an African elephant, a different species entirely. Her handling was likely rough, Rapoza said, in a generation where many keepers came from backgrounds in circuses and used “a heavy hand.” This doesn’t work with Emily’s personality, her keepers say, which is needy and awkward and accustomed to the environment where she was raised. “She’s like an only child,” Rapoza said.
On July 4, 1985, after 20 months in Louisiana, Emily was moved back to New Bedford. In her absence, the city had rallied around her. After a dour headline in early 1984, “Emily isn’t coming home for a while,” a blizzard of support followed. “Efforts to build house for Emily get boost” read one headline the next month. Then politicians fell in line: “City legislator twists arm for elephant.” By the summer, the news declared that an “Elephantine effort raises $82,038 to bring Emily and a friend home.”
Emily’s new barn was finished in October 1986, after she had returned home, and only weeks before Ruth’s rescue. “Emily lives like elephant queen in her new home,” the paper read.
Most recently, an animal activist brought a lawsuit alleging the zoo has mistreated Ruth and Emily, with the goal to move them to an elephant sanctuary. (The closest one is in Tennessee.) The good-hearted hope was that the animals spend their remaining time in the best possible conditions.
The lawsuit, however, was dismissed last month for lacking any evidence regarding the alleged poor treatment of animals. The judge’s decision read, in part, “As to the plaintiff’s allegation that Ruth received either poor care or no care at all for her foot, the Court finds the opposite to be the case.”
Moving an elephant across the country today would require following regulations and standards that didn’t exist four decades ago, according to Rapoza, when Emily was last moved. Budas, the veterinarian who spends nearly every day applying advanced care to Ruth’s feet and joints, explained that moving elderly animals from their longtime home was not feasible, and potentially even more cruel.
“To move an animal of this size means spending years training and conditioning them to be comfortable in a box,” Budas said. “The trip to Tennessee or Georgia is long. For someone like Ruth … with how she stands and distributes weight … she just can’t do it.”
As for Emily, who remains in good health, her overwhelmingly negative reaction to the move when she was younger has convinced the keepers that another move would just be cruel in old age.
“All of Emily’s memories are of this place,” said Rapoza. “The one consistent thing is this place.”
Moving Ruth or Emily to a sanctuary also means they would actually receive less veterinary care, says Budas, which could be “excruciatingly painful” for Ruth especially. And there’s an overwhelming likelihood that the elephants in a sanctuary would not accept the geriatric newcomers.
“This is their herd,” Budas said. “This is their home.”
Ruth’s last days
Many zoos are no longer looking to acquire elephants, and “we are one of them,” said Rapoza. This was her confirmation that Ruth and Emily will be the last elephants to live at Buttonwood.
Emily and Ruth are the only Asian elephants remaining in all of New England. They are also some of the oldest members of their species anywhere in the country. Though African elephants remain in Providence’s Roger Williams Zoo, an ecological chapter is likely in its last days.
Soon, people in New Bedford will no longer be able to marvel at the magic and grandeur of elephants in their own backyard. No longer will they form bonds with hometown creatures that have inspired thousands into a lifelong love of animals. And no longer will they sacrifice those animals’ quality of life to achieve such goals.
On a recent day, Ruth ventured out from the elephant house into an unseasonably warm morning. In a golden patch of sunlight, she settled down and reached for a nearby stick. For more than an hour, she happily turned it over and moved it to and fro.
“She’s still being Ruth,” Rapoza said. “She’s a little slow right now, but she’s stable.”
Who knows how many more times she’ll venture out into the yard of the large habitat in the zoo’s northeastern corner. One day, this space might be suitable for other animals that desperately need the high-quality care and conservation which only zoos can offer — such as rhinos. But the future is uncertain.
What is certain is that New Bedford, trained well by her elephants, will never forget Ruth nor Emily.
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
This is a beautiful story. I hope Ruth is happy in her last days.
I wish I could have been there to witness Ruth and Emily walking the streets of New Bedford. This is a beautiful tribute to Ruth in her last days
I LOVED this article. Sad though. Man, New Bedford has the most interesting history. Can you imagine elephants just walking through the park, taking a little swim, and then heading home?? Fun read!
What an awesome article. I never knew. Definitely read with mixed feelings. It has been hard for these majestic animals. However, I am moved by the care, compassion and commitment shown by the Zoo personnel. What a great story right in our backyard. I hope it generates new groundswell of support for this institution.