Anne the elephant says goodbye to the circus
Pachyderm which became a global cause celebre after emergence of upsetting footage enjoys new home in Longleat Safari Park
Anne the elephant at Longleat Safari Park.Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
Steven Morris The Guardian,
Thursday 7 April 2011 She has a leisurely roll in a pile of sand before spending a good 40 minutes rubbing against assorted metal bars and gates. She pauses to suck up a few stray strands of hay that she sprays over her back. And then she trundles off for a snooze. It is hardly an action-packed day, but after half a century of hard circus graft, Anne the elephant could be forgiven for taking it easy. And, like minders keen to protect a sensitive star, her new keepers at Longleat Safari Park are not going to force her to perform for the cameras. "It's about giving her dignity now," says Jon Cracknell, the director of animal operations at Longleat. "She needs a bit of space and time to get used to her new surroundings, her new life. We do things at her pace, not anyone else's, and I don't want her to become a tabloid pawn. She needs her privacy." It may already be too late for that. For more than a week now the story of Anne, Britain's last circus elephant, has competed with crime and war stories for space in the tabloids – and fared pretty well. The fuss shows no sign of dying down. When the Guardian was granted an audience with Anne yesterday, the PR department's phones were ringing off the hook from newspapers wanting to know how Anne was doing and photographers keen to come along and document her every roll and rub.read more at:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/07/anne-the-elephant-goodbye-circus Journalists from as far afield as Brazil have requested access, and Cracknell had to put his foot down when representatives of a Hollywood actor – he is too discreet to say which one – expressed a desire to have their man pictured next to Anne.
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