Odesa Zoo celebrates 46th birthday of Wendy the elephant

Wendy the elephant's birthday was celebrated at the Odesa Zoo on September 13 with a concert and a children's party.

She arrived in Odesa in 1981, when she was two years old.

Wendy has the most respectable age among all elephants in Ukraine and weighs about 3 tons. As always, the zoo organized a concert, and director Ihor Belyakov greeted the guests in an Indian elephant costume - Wendy belongs to this particular species of elephant.

PHOTO: Igor Belyakov/Facebook

As always, a big cake was made for the elephant. Given that the birthday girl is not a human, it did not consist of cakes and cream, but of a lightweight frame filled with fruit and stylized as a cake with candles.

Wendy'sbirthday is celebrated every year. And in 2022, on September 23, Odesa Zoo celebrated its 100th anniversary by presenting a new lion's den, which housed white lions from Feldman EcoPark in Kharkiv, which had been under fire for a long time.

At the same time, they considered the possibility to get a mate for Wendy from a European zoo, but it was necessary to reconstruct the existing enclosure. Ihor Belyakov did not rule out the possibility that the elephants' home would be rebuilt at the expense of patrons, but he could not say how much money would be needed for this.

As zoo employees told Intent in an informal conversation, the management of the institution was considering the possibility of building a new pen for Wendy with a swimming pool and more in line with modern requirements and standards for elephant keeping, instead of the one she is in now, which was built in Soviet times. There were even preliminary negotiations with patrons, but after rough calculations it turned out that none of the sponsors would be able to provide the necessary amount. According to the employees, about 2 million hryvnias are needed.

Кирило Бойко