Chuck, with Mali and Targa, as a baby
/ file photo
SYRACUSE (AP) -- Three of the Syracuse zoo's elephants are finally back home after spending the past five years at a safari park in Canada.
Ted Fox, director of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, says Mali and her three-year-old son Chuck arrived at the zoo Tuesday afternoon, followed the next day by Targa. The pachyderms were carried from Cambridge, Ontario in tractor-trailer trucks specially designed to haul elephants.
They were sent to Canada to ease overcrowding in the Syracuse zoo's elephant exhibit. Zoo officials began filing the required paperwork last year for the elephants' return.
Fox says Mali, Chuck and Targa will be kept in quarantine at the zoo's newly opened Asian Elephant Preserve, home to three other female pachyderms and a male.
The trio is expected to be available for public viewing in about a month.
(Copyright ©2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
