THE BALLOON MAN

A Candy Cane Built For An Elephant

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from: wctv.tv

Valdosta, GA - December 21, 2012 - Christmas has traditionally been a human holiday... But at Wild Adventures in Valdosta, an elephant and two lions were treated to a holiday feast. The lions were the first to get their presents.

Micha Hogan is a Public Relations Coordinator at Wild Adventures. She said "Nila and Sarabi are sisters. They're sixteen years old so there might be some teen drama going on when we give them presents."

Luckily they both played nice when each got these turkeys covered in Christmas wrapping paper. But you wouldn't want to take their treats away.

Walter Dupree is the park's Zoological Curator. He said "if you've ever had a dog that tried to growl at you when you tried to take their Christmas present away you can imagine what it would be like if a lion, something ten times as big as most dogs would do to you."

Shirley was next on the list. She got an eight pound candy cane.

At 69 years old Shirley is the second oldest elephant in captivity in the world. She's also clearly a fan of candy canes.

"It would probably take me a month to eat that candy cane" said one young boy watching the event.

Shirley did it in an afternoon. The tough part was figuring out what the animals wanted.

Santa was dressed and present at the event he said "I knew they loved meat so it was easy to come up with that one. The candy cane was a little harder. It took a little deeper thought to come up with that to make it work."

This was the first year that Wild Adventures gave its animals presents. They've said they plan to do it annually.