Henry Vilas Zoo 1981

Wayne Jackson, the retired "Wanderin' Elephant Man," recently shared this picture taken at then Henry Vilas Zoo in 1981. He inquired what became of these young elephants.

Winky II
Pictured above as the larger of the three animals, Winky II arrived to the zoo in late 1966, traded from Morgan Berry for her predecessor and replacing her namesake. Both Winky I and II have the label of "mankiller" in the Elephant.se dababase. The former killed a young child in her exhibit. The latter killed a "caretaker" at Carol Buckley's private facility in Tennessee, to where Winky II had been relocated following the closure of the Madison zoo's elephant program in 2000.

Princess
Princess was the second of these three elephants acquired by the Henry Vilas Zoo. The North American Regional Studbook states she was acquired in February 1974. Further information is requested regarding who imported the animal. She died at the zoo in October 1981, six months after this photograph was taken.

Bozie
Bozie has lived a long zoo career at many facilities, including several transportations on breeding loans. She was originally imported from Sri Lanka in late 1976 and featured in Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. She arrived in Wisconsin around the age of 5 after outgrowing her exhibit at the Children's Zoo. After only 2 years in residence, she returned to Lincoln Park in 1982. After a successful two year breeding loan to the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Missouri, in the late 1980s, she returned to give birth to the first and only elephant born in Illinois. Bozie later was permanently relocated to the Baton Rouge Zoo in Louisiana in 1997, where she resided until the death of her companion Judy earlier this year. The elephant program was discontinued ( at least temporarily, according to the facility ) and Bozie was transferred to the National Zoo's new elephant exhibit.