Bozie (Photo by CC Lockwood via National Zoo)
The National Zoo says it is about to take in a new Asian elephant. Bozie, a 37-year-old female, will join the other pachyderms on the zoo’s Elephant Walk later this summer, when she arrives on loan from the Baton Rouge Zoo in Louisiana.
Bozie is coming to the National Zoo following the death earlier this year of her companion, Judy, a 46-year-old elephant that succumbed to arthritis. No specific date has been set, but a zoo representative says Bozie will go on display later this summer following a 30-day quarantine period.
In Bozie, though, the National Zoo is getting an elephant with some special talents. The Washington Post reports that she is also something of an accomplished artist. At Baton Rouge, she developed a love for painting, and that zoo even sold a few of her canvases to raise money for tsunami relief in Sri Lanka. Bozie was born in Sri Lanka in 1975, and was moved to the United States on Nov. 2, 1976.