KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Tonka is Zoo Knoxville's remaining bull African Elephant and is the largest of his herd and in North America. Now, he is preparing to leave Zoo Knoxville in the coming months.
This poses some challenges in the zoo moving him to Hohenwald, home to a community of aging elephants in an Elephant Sanctuary.
For the other two elephants, Jana and Edie, Zoo Knoxville rented crates from other zoos. Tonka, at a whopping 16,000 pounds, needed a crate of his own.
That's where Drew Petty, owner of Petty's Welding comes in.
"There's not a box this size in the Western Hemisphere to move him in that is easy enough to get to Knoxville," Petty said.
Petty said it was an exciting project, especially since he grew up seeing Tonka at the zoo. But it's also something his team is taking seriously.
"It's designed around his safety," he said. "When you're transporting 40,000 pounds with a live heartbeat down I-40 on a tractor-trailer. It's not a box of Kleenex falling out on the side of the interstate if something goes wrong. It's, it's very critical to the life of this animal."
Monday, the team at the zoo will move his crate into the elephant barn to begin acclimation training.
"He's kind of a wild card, you know," Phil Colclough, director of Animal Care, Conservation and Education at Zoo Knoxville. "I think he's probably going to be easier than the other two."
Training an elephant like Tonka to get acclimated to a big crate is another step in moving a several-ton animal. The zoo said it's about positive reinforcement.
"We always want him to want to participate in this training," Colclough said. "If he doesn't want to do it that day, or that hour, or that moment, he just doesn't do it. It's verbal, it's 'Good boy,' 'You're awesome Tonk!' Just think about what you do with your dogs."
Once Tonka moves to the sanctuary in Middle Tennessee, the zoo said they don't have plans for more elephants. Instead, they plan on using the elephant enclosure for white rhinos.