The elephant's name was Matteau, but everyone called him Jumbo (after the more famous elephant from Barnum's Circus named Jumbo). He'd wave his trunk side-to-side, up and down, take peanuts from you, and sometimes pat you on the head with that trunk.
We lived two miles from the Zoo, and Carolina Beach Road was (and is) the main highway leading towards Wilmington proper, so I saw him a lot. A couple of years before he died, in 1991, he started to get a little mean and withdrawn. He knew he wasn't supposed to be there anymore, that it had been a nice visit, that he'd enjoyed meeting and playing with all the kids over the years, but he had to be somewhere else when he died. He was drawn home, but he couldn't ever go back, and I think it finally dawned on him just how trapped he was.
I don't know how I feel about zoos when I think about stuff like that.
It's called Tregembo Animal Park nowadays. It's been around for over 50 years. If you're ever in the Wilmington area and you feel the urge to watch a bunch of monkeys jerk off, it's eight bucks for adults, six bucks for kids. Click the photos to go to flickr and see them larger, or to view the whole set.
Wide shot of Tregembo Animal Park (formerly Tote-Em-In Zoo). Taken from across the highway while standing in the bed of my truck.
Black and White shot of the front
This is the spot where Matteau the Elephant used to draw in customers from the roadside. Matteau died in 1991. He used to wave at you as you passed, and he'd take peanuts from you if you stopped to say hello. Seems so empty now.
Black and White close shot of the Lion's Head entrance
Sometimes the kids in my neighborhood would walk all the way down there as a group and pay for tickets. Sometimes we got in for free, because the fellow running the reptile part of it (a guy named Jerry Brewer) lived in the neighborhood. My Dad was friends (drinking buddies) with his brother. He'd always bring home some crazy animal and let it loose in his yard. I remember he brought one of those lizards that run on two legs and display the frill around their heads home one weekend, and we had a blast chasing that thing all over his fenced-in backyard. That thing moved like liquid lightning, none of us could catch it.
I don't know if they still have it, but they had a snake pit at one time, this large mass of writhing animals in a concrete building, and Jerry would give lectures while standing in the middle of it, picking up snakes to show off while he was talking. He'd milk a venomous snake, taking questions and dispelling snake myths. He dressed sort of like Jim from Wild Kingdom.
Once, when I was a little kid, a wild boar somehow got away from the zoo for few days, and managed to make its way through the woods (there were a lot of woods back then, not so much now) all the way down to where we lived. My Dad noticed him in the woods behind our home, and threw out a bunch of scraps to keep him occupied. Then he lured him into a temporary rope trap he'd made and called the Tote-Em-In people to come get it. As the two knuckleheads they sent were trying to load the boar into their truck, they took the rope off the animal prematurely, and he got away again. It was another week before they caught him and took him back.
Lady cleaning out the front of the Lion's Head entrance to Tregembo Animal Park. It looks like she's brushing that tooth.
Two ladies eyeing me suspiciously from the Lion's Head entrance. I don't blame them - after all, I was a dude standing in my truck bed across the highway taking pictures.
I might spring for the eight bucks and take some pictures of the animals inside someday. I dunno. Like I said, I sometimes don't know how I feel about zoos.
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