Anxious anticipation as elephant's pregnancy nears an end

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2009, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

It's been 23 years since Doug Tomkinson watched his son come into the world. And perhaps time has dulled the memories a bit, but the hulking man is pretty sure he wasn't this nervous back then.

The goateed keeper from Utah's Hogle Zoo paced anxiously outside the elephant exhibit on Wednesday, just hours after learning that tests on one of his charges, Christie, show that she's due to give birth soon. The moment Tomkinson has awaited since Hogle officials first attempted to inseminate Christie, more than three years ago, is now days away.

But the days ahead are fraught with peril for the 22-year-old cow and her calf.

An elephant birth is a complicated affair -- so much so that even given the enormous ticket-selling potential a baby elephant brings, only a few zoos undertake the years-long process.

No African elephant has ever been born in Utah. The first and only Asian elephant birth in the state came in 1918 at Hogle's old Liberty Park location. Utah schoolchildren named the calf Prince Utah. He died before his first birthday.

Ninety years of advances in veterinary medicine later, calf mortality remains high. It's been less than a month since a mother elephant accidentally killed her 1-day-old baby at the Memphis Zoo. A year earlier, veterinarians at the San Diego Zoo euthanized a 2-month-old calf that had fallen sick with an antibiotic-resistant staph infection.

Stillborns are common, too. Among hundreds of captive cows in United States zoos are several that have carried mummified fetal remains in their wombs for years. And among the many who have passed a stillborn fetus was Misha, who delivered a dead calf in 2003 at Six Flags Marine World in California, two years before she was transferred to Hogle, where she lived until her death in 2008.

Tracing the path that calves move from womb to birth gives context to such misfortunes. An elephant fetus rests low in the womb of its mother until labor begins, at which time contractions push the calf up and over the mother's pelvis, high above her hips. The calf then descends through the long urogenital canal.

There are a number of places along the way that the calf -- weighing from 180 to 350 pounds -- can become stuck. Hogle's senior veterinarian, Nancy Carpenter, said that while emergency C-sections have been attempted, the procedure has always come at the expense of the life of the mother.

Any wonder, then, that Tomkinson is so nervous?

"At least my wife could tell me when she was in labor," the keeper said, harking back on the day, more than two decades ago, that he became a father. "Christie can't tell us what is going on."

That is not to say that the matter is completely out of his hands. After Christie was confirmed pregnant by a team of pachyderm insemination specialists from Germany in the winter of 2008, Tomkinson set to work helping the 7,700-pound mother prepare. Every day since, Tomkinson and his fellow keepers have put Christie through a regimen of stretching and strengthening exercises designed to ensure that her calf would not grow too big and to help her build up the muscles she will need during the birthing process.

"She's in the best shape she's ever been in," Tomkinson said.

Zoo workers have combed the elephant yard for places where the calf might slip or get stuck. That, they hope, might prevent a tragedy like the one that occurred in Memphis, when a mother elephant fatally injured her baby while trying to help it after it fell. The zoo's crew has also added several rows of sturdy eyelets low on the enclosure's fence posts, where they'll string cables to make sure that the calf cannot escape.

Meanwhile, Carpenter's veterinary crew has reviewed countless videos and been in extensive discussions with other zoos that have been down this road. The German team that inseminated Christie is on stand-by and is willing to advise over the phone or in person if the need arises.

"We think we're about as prepared as we can be," Carpenter said.

Now, to the best extent possible, Carpenter said she and her staff will simply let nature take its course.

When the time comes, she said, the birth will likely be in the elephant barn. Cristie's legs will be harnessed to prevent her from hurting herself, the calf or her handlers. But other than that precaution, Carpenter said, the zoo's staff will try not to intervene.

"We're not going in there with the theory that we need to help," she said. "We're going in there with the theory that we're just going to watch."

After that, she said, the calf will be removed only for a short time -- just minutes, hopefully -- to do a few quick tests and to give Christie a chance to settle after the labor. "We want to make sure the baby smells like a baby elephant and not like us," Carpenter said.

Given the potential hazards ahead, Tomkinson said he's unlikely to feel settled even if the birth goes well. And as a father, that's a feeling he knows quite well.

mlaplante@sltrib.com" Target="_BLANK">mlaplante@sltrib.com