MEET THE ELEPHANTS
The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo's African lady elephants, Jo, Moshi, Martika and Shenga have been joined by an old flame of Willy's. The Zoo introduced a new member of the African Elephant Crossing herd, 29-year-old female Kallie. Kallie arrived in Cleveland from the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium's International Conservation Center in Somerset County, Pennsylvania on November 1st, and is on loan from the Philadelphia Zoo. 
8,100-pound Kallie is acclimating to her new home in one of the elephant parlors in the visitor center and will be carefully introduced to the other five lady elephants so she can join them in the exhibit's outdoor ranges. Kallie's arrival is a reunion, considering she once lived with three of the Zoo's other elephants, Willy, Martika and Shenga, in Florida. She spent the most time with Willy, who was her traveling companion in the private entertainment industry for about 15 years.
Willy, Kallie, Martika and Shenga were all part of a massive privately owned herd of elephants at the estate of eccentric millionaire Arthur Jones' "Jumbo Lair" in Ocala, Florida.
Jones, inventor of the Nautilus exercise machine, kept a large amount of exotic animals on his 550 to 600 acre property. Estimates of his animal holdings included as many as 98 elephants, a rhino, a gorilla and dozens of crocodiles and snakes. There's even the report that Jones brought Kallie, Martika and Shenga to the U.S. on board the same 1983 rescue flight from Zimbabwe when they were younger than 2 years old.
Martika first left Jumbo Lair in 1984, being sold to another private owner, and Shenga left in 1986. Willy and Kallie were sold together in 1989 to the now defunct Four Bears Water Park in Michigan. They stayed together through their next move, to a private entertainment company called Zoomotion, working in various capacities until 1998 when Willy went to Disney's Animal Kingdom. Kallie spent part of the year at the Philadelphia Zoo in 1999 and moved there full-time in 2004.
The Metroparks Zoo continues to negotiate with a Southern zoo for an adolescent bull elephant, who will not arrive until 2012. The herd —six strong — will be the biggest in the zoo's 128-year history.
Zoo Director Steve Taylor and General Curator Geoffrey Hall explained that the exhibit could accommodate 10 or more elephants, but acquiring exotic animals is a complex process that involves negotiations with numerous North American zoos, seeking compatibility for an existing population. They also hope to breed the African elephants, and that adds layers of additional complexity because a diverse and healthy gene pool is always desirable. Willy and the other females are not good candidates for breeding because they are at least 20, an advanced age for the species.