Zoo searches for 'elephant angel' of war
Evening Herald
Sheila the elephant pictured in the care of Denise Weston Austin.
Belfast Zoo today launched a bid to identify a mystery woman who looked after one of its elephants in her backyard to save it from German bombs during the Second World War.
The baby elephant, Sheila, was moved out of the zoo because of fears of a hit from bombers during the Belfast Blitz of 1941.
Sheila was one of the lucky ones at the zoo, built on the hills in the north of the city. The Ministry of Public Security ordered 23 animals to be killed in case they got free after bomb damage and attacked people -- they included a tiger, a black bear, a lynx, a hyena, two polar bears and six wolves.
Instead of meeting the same fate, Sheila was walked down the road by keepers to a red-brick house on the Whitewell Road where a woman gave her sanctuary in her backyard for several months until the bombing was over.
The woman has never been identified and the zoo knows her only as 'the elephant angel'.
But as it celebrates its 75th birthday zoo bosses are seeking to identify the elephant angel. It says it has many unusual stories from down the years, but is convinced that of the angel must be their most curious.
Zoo manager Mark Challis said: "The care provided by our mystery lady is unique to zoo history and we would like to make contact with her family and properly document this gap in our past."
The zoo has a couple of grainy black and white photographs of two women sitting on a garden seat watching Sheila drinking out of a tin bucket beside the back door of the house.
Giving house board to an elephant may be frowned upon by today's animal welfare officers, but in wartime needs must.
And the love and care Sheila got during her months in her temporary home did her no harm -- she went back to the zoo and lived for another quarter of a century, dying of a skin complaint in 1966.
hnews@herald.ie
- Ian Graham
