She’s just smelling. That tree smells like everybody because everybody rubs all over it. We don’t have an elephant that hasn’t rubbed over it. Every elephant that has walked through the front door loves Itchy Scratchy Tree. 🙂 It’s part of extending her nose up smelling, and then, of course, trying to see if she can grab a branch because Itchy Scratchy Tree is also edible, but all the low branches have already been eaten.

The chances that the elephants might know one of the others is fairly decent because most of the elephants that were imported into South America came from the same place. A lot of the elephants came through the same zoo in Europe. Mara was moved from there along with two other elephants to South America. One of those elephants was Merry who was supposed to come to the sanctuary but sadly died before that was possible. The other elephant went to Brazil but the name is unknown. Often elephants are held together in a place before being shipped off, so you get a bunch of elephants who end up in these places with a lot of other elephants. Sometimes it’s for a very short period of time; sometimes longer depending upon demand. Some of the circus elephants in South America have been kept with other circus elephants for short periods of time during wintering-over, or when not on the road, or during the off-season. So there’s a decent chance that at least someone is going to have crossed over with someone before. Of course we are never going to know who it was. We had been told that Rana had been with Maia and Guida for awhile, but it’s hard to know which stories are true – and we hear a lot of different versions of the stories. But yes, there is a chance that somebody along the way is going to have known somebody else. And as you have heard from last night’s video, it is possible that we have two right now.

Thanks, Juan! ❤️