Frankfurt’s last elephant

After moving to a new apartment, all my normal day-to-day ways have changed a little bit, including my jogging paths. Recently, I found a little alley, “Barodaweg”, i.e. “Baroda’s Alley”. As always in Frankfurt, a little sign explained who the eponym for the alley was. And it was a V.I.P. – or, a V.I.E. (very important elephant), to be precise. I learned: Baroda was the last elephant living in the Frankfurt zoo from 1959 to 1984. After all her friends had died, she was lonely – hence the zoo guys decided to relocate her to the Hamburg Hagenbeck zoo where she joined a new elephant family. I found it somehow sweet that an alley was named after her, in memoriam elephantum.