RAMPANT INFECTION FELLS ANNABELLE THE ELEPHANTLarry Campbell Our Annabelle is dead. The bacterial infection that she and veterinarians here and from California had been fighting for months finally took its toll. Monday, despite all their efforts, vets said they believed the infection had spread to the elephant's bones and bloodstream. The animal who was the beginning of the Alaska Zoo, who'd become known and loved by two generations of Alaskans, was so sick with infection in her foot and hurting so badly she couldn't stand up anymore. Her caretakers decided to euthanize the animal and end her pain Monday afternoon. The 9,000-pound animal had collapsed that morning, said Dr. Dennis Graham, an orthopedic surgeon and member of the Alaska Zoo board of directors. There was little hope of her surviving. Zoo officials had been struggling to treat Annabelle's foot infections for more than a year. Early last month, two experts came to Anchorage to treat her -- veterinarian Dr. Jim Oosterhuis, head vet at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and Alan Roocroft of Ramona, Calif., a world-renowned pachyderm expert. For a while there was reason to be hopeful. Annabelle was taking her medicine and starting to feel better. But on Monday a new abscess in her foot had ruptured, revealing serious bone infection. That, plus blood tests and other symptoms, led vets to believe sepsis had set in -- infection was flowing through her bloodstream, causing her kidneys and liver to fail. Local vet Dr. Riley Wilson had given her pain medication while he, zoo director Sammye Seawell, the elephant's trainers and Graham tried to get her legs back under her. But Annabelle was listless. Her eyes wouldn't focus. Veins in her ears virtually disappeared, indicating her blood pressure had dropped severely ''She just didn't have the strength to get up,'' Graham said. After a telephone conference with Oosterhuis and Roocroft in California, the decision was made to inject her with drugs that first put her to sleep, then stopped her breathing and her heart. Seawell sat next to her on a bale of hay, Graham said, stroking her trunk. ''I'll tell you, there wasn't a dry eye in that (elephant) house,'' he said. The 32-year-old Asian elephant is the reason there is an Alaska Zoo. Annabelle was a reject from a circus when a local grocer won her in 1966 as part of a toilet paper company sales promotion gimmick. He showed her off in a Spenard grocery parking lot, and she spent her nights in the stables at John and Sammye Seawell's Diamond H Ranch on O'Malley Road. Sammye Seawell grew attached to the baby elephant. Eventually, so did Anchorage. Families started showing up to see Annabelle. Two years later, Sewell and others formed a nonprofit corporation that became the zoo, and Annabelle became the first resident. Maggie, the zoo's African elephant, joined Annabelle in 1983. Since then the zoo's senior attraction has become an artist. Clutching brushes in her trunk, Annabelle created abstract works that became known across the country. More than 600 have sold. By late Monday, John Seawell had made arrangements to have Annabelle buried on zoo property, Graham said. Most likely, the Seawells will have a private burial, with only those closest to the animal saying goodbye personally. But the zoo will be open, Seawell said. ''Sammye didn't see any reason to keep it closed,'' he said. ''That's just the way she wanted it.'' |
