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Lady can now add “taking two baths at the same time” to her growing list of impressive accomplishments.

Outside of Stall 1, we have a water trough with a corresponding water source. It’s a dual faucet, and one side is designed for a hose attachment. We use a hose to spray the elephants and to fill the water trough. The other side of the faucet has a 1.5 inch (4 cm) directional spray head on it. This allows us to direct it to most any height and can spray a nearby elephant over their back, on their sides, or their head, based on where the elephant wants it. We watch how they position their bodies and mouth to determine where to spray.

Lady was standing next to the trough, clearly expecting a shower. Kat set it up to spray over her back, and she stood there, happily, letting the water run over her back. After a moment, Lady opened her mouth, like she wanted water sprayed directly in it. Lady could have moved her mouth towards the stream of water, and Kat would’ve directed the flow lower and into her mouth. Since Lady didn’t move her head, it was clear she was enjoying the water running over her head and body…but also wanted it in her mouth.

This left one thing for Kat to do – which was to turn on the water hose and spray a second stream of water directly into Lady’s mouth. Lady enjoyed her “double bath” immensely and seemed to have a blast.

For those who are concerned about how much water we use sometimes, please know we have over 20 fresh springs here & we do reuse water whenever possible. We have an underground pipe near the trough that runs to a mud wallow. Whenever we clean the trough (which involves dumping out all the water, scrubbing it, and refilling it), the old water runs through the underwater pipe and re-muds the mud wallow.

The video is from another day this week, when Lady was only enjoying one water source. You can multiple her excitement by two to imagine how happy she was at two streams. There isn’t a video of both streams because, while Kat (like Lady) has many skills, she can’t direct two streams of water and film at the same time. 😉

April 3, 2020