Bella
I’ve said it before. I’m a sucker for loyal or heroic dog stories like “Hawkeye,” who I blogged about in August and for sweet admittedly anthropomorphic animal tales like the one I heard this morning, “Tarra and Bella: Elephant loses man’s best friend.”
The story of Tarra, the elephant, and Bella, the dog, is really not so much about “man’s best friend” but about “elephant’s best friend.”
In 2009, Tarra ‘adopted’ Bella, a stray who’d wandered onto the Hohenwald, Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary. Prior to retiring to the 2,700 acre sanctuary, Tarra had been a circus elephant.
Tarra and Bella hit it off from the start. They kept company together, played together, slept together and when Bella got sick not long after she arrived, Tarra stood vigil for three weeks while Bella recuperated in the sanctuary’s office.
The two became inseparable. The story was extensively covered in the press, particularly by CBS News at “An Elephant Never Forgets.”
As reported by CBS News Reporter Steve Hartman when he first interviewed the sanctuary’s founders speaking of the relationship between Tarra and Bella, “They honestly believe that some animals are here for the same reasons we are – to love and do for others.”
Sad news.
But the tragic news reported this morning was that sanctuary workers found Bella’s body October 26, 2011. She’d been apparently attacked by coyotes. But as Steve Smith, the sanctuary’s director of elephant husbandry related, it looks like Tarra retrieved her friend’s body from where it was attacked and brought it to the barn where Bella was found. There were no signs of an attack in that area, which suggests that Tarra moved Bella. “Tarra, on the underside of her trunk, had blood – as if she picked up the body.”
Elephants are highly social animals. And key to their survival, according to researchers, is their ability to recall. It’s been oft-said, “Elephants Never Forget.” So it was hardly surprising but nevertheless heartening to learn from the sanctuary that Tarra has been seen visiting best friend Bella’s grave.
And to create a “lasting legacy for Bella,” the sanctuary has started “The Bella Fund.” And to commemorate how “The unlikely duo of an elephant and a dog reminded each of us of the importance of loving one other, despite our differences,” tributes, videos and slides have also been posted on the sanctuary’s website “In Honor of Bella.”
