It all started in a barn at the Oregon Zoo around 5:30 a.m. on April 14, 1962.
Belle, a very pregnant Asian elephant, was in the throes of labor, thrashing wildly, bawling in pain and ramming her mass against the walls of her enclosure as caretakers looked on. She calmed briefly, but by 5:56 a.m., she became agitated again. At 5:58, 225 pounds of Packy, a pachyderm whose celebrity preceded even his birth, slid into the world.
And today, Feb. 9, 2017, he slid out of it, euthanized by veterinarians at the zoo where he was born 54 years earlier after a long bout with recurring tuberculosis.
“We loved Packy so much,” said Bob Lee, senior elephant keeper who worked with Packy for the past 17 years. “He was my favorite — the most impressive animal I’ve ever known. It’s hard to think about coming in to work tomorrow and not seeing him. There will never be another like him.”
At 54 years old, Packy was thought to be the oldest captive pachyderm in North America at the time of his death and one of the oldest anywhere on the planet.
Packy the Oregon Zoo elephant dies at 54 (historical footage)
On July 19, 1960, Belle and Thonglaw, Packy’s parental pachyderms, did what elephants do when they love each other and set Packy on the path to stardom. An elephant hadn’t been born in captivity in the United States for 44 years, and the hubbub that surrounded Belle’s pregnancy was nothing short of cacophonous.
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Zookeepers kept Belle’s pregnancy secret for as long as they could, looking to avoid the media maelstrom that was sure to follow the announcement. But so few elephants had been born in captivity that experts had no idea how long Belle would stay pregnant.
Her pregnancy remained covert until January 1962, when false labor sent zoo officials scrambling. Belle, however, still had months to go before Packy would be born. But her secret was out and The Great Portland Elephant Watch, as it was dubbed, began.
Zookeepers, administrators and reporters camped out in the elephant barn at what then was called the Portland Zoological Gardens. As did Morgan Berry, an animal importer who had bought a 1-month-old Belle in Thailand 10 years before. He’d raised her as a pet, letting her roam the family’s Seattle home and taking her for rides in his pink Cadillac convertible until she outgrew both the house and the car.
“Suddenly, Portland had something to both shout and gloat about, and the city — no, make that the entire state — literally quivered with anticipation,” Matthew Maberry, the veterinarian who delivered Packy, wrote in his memoir, “Packy & Me.”
“Nothing like this had happened in Portland’s history (or world history, for that matter),” Maberry wrote.
A name-the-baby contest was launched, a radio station broadcast hourly “Belle Bulletins” and a local florist delivered a huge papier-mache baby bootie to the zoo filled with 300 long-stem roses, which the elephants promptly ate.
Maberry meanwhile set up shop in the barn, sleeping on a pile of hay alongside a respirator and a primitive heart-rate monitor, which he hoped to use in the birthing process. He consulted with experts in human obstetrics and cardiology.
But he didn’t know if the equipment, or advice, would be useful as neither he nor anyone else involved knew anything about elephant births.
Despite that lack of experience, Packy came out healthy and stout and, with a helpful kick in the rump from mom, he rose to his feet for the first time in that hay-filled barn.
The excitement of the day overcame Zoo director Jack Marks, who fainted while on the phone with a reporter later that morning. Across the nation and around the world, radio stations blared news of the birth and, within a month, LIFE Magazine devoted an 11-page spread to Packy’s arrival.
After 44 years without the captive birth of an elephant, his arrival ushered in an unprecedented baby boom at the zoo, which saw 28 births over the next few years.
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While Packy’s health suffered in recent years, his star hardly faded.
Lee, Packy’s trainer, had trouble putting into words what the elder statesman elephant meant to the zoo and, in a much larger sense, to the community.
“Packy is the one that started it all,” Lee told The Oregonian/OregonLive in December. “This community, the people who were kids when he was born, became invested in him at an early age. He’s nothing less than an icon. When you think of the Oregon Zoo, you think of Packy.”
And Packy draws more than just eager throngs who line the fences of Elephant Lands, the zoo’s recently expanded pachyderm enclosure, hoping to get a glimpse of the massive bull, who weighs in excess of six tons.
His personality, as Lee describes it, has made him a draw for those employed at the zoo.
“Everyone wants to work with Packy,” he said. “There’s something about the way he holds his head. It’s hard to describe, but he just exudes charisma whenever you’re around him. You can’t help but love the guy.”
While you would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t have some affinity for the big guy, there are those who have nothing nice to say about his circumstances. Over the five decades of his life, views on captive animals have aged as well. Some have pushed for the animals, which are highly intelligent and very social, to be released to sanctuaries.
One group, Free Oregon Zoo Elephants, has staked out three goals: to stop the zoo’s captive breeding program, halt importation of any new elephants to the zoo and “to protect the elderly and ailing Packy by shipping him to sanctuary in a warm, dry climate, to spend his remaining years in peace and freedom.”
That final goal would go unrealized.
After months of searching for alternative treatments, the decision was made Thursday to euthanize Packy.
“We’d run out of options for treating him,” said Dr. Tim Storms, the zoo’s lead veterinarian. “The remaining treatments involved side effects that would have been very hard on Packy with no guarantee of success, plus a risk of creating further resistance. None of us felt it would be right to do that. But without treatment, his TB would have continued to get worse. We consulted other experts — veterinarians and pharmacists — and a lot of people were involved in this decision, but that didn’t make it any easier. Anybody who’s had a sick or elderly pet knows how painful this can be, even if you know it’s the best thing for the animal.”
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Packy’s first signs of ill health came in 2013 when he and his son Rama were diagnosed with tuberculosis. Very little is known about how to treat the infection in elephants, but vets began a course of antibiotics and it appeared the aged pachyderm was responding well to the drugs. He rebounded and kicked the disease.
But it came back in 2016 and this time the drugs didn’t have the same effect. Veterinarians discontinued treatment in December after the respiratory illness proved resistant to the prescription. Packy himself seemed no worse for wear, Lee said, as symptoms of TB in elephants are hard to detect.
“Packy might be the only one who doesn’t know he has TB,” Lee said.
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Any obituary seeking to encapsulate the life of such a widely known animal celebrity will inevitably come up short, but in an effort to do just that, Lee said Packy was responsible for nothing short of keeping the zoo relevant.
“He’s had such a tremendous impact on our history and our collective sense of nostalgia,” Lee said. “Without him, I don’t know where the zoo would be.”
— Kale Williams
kwilliams@oregonian.com
503-294-4048
@sfkale
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