Elephant Encounter

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W. Dayton Whittle

August 19, 2009

Debbie Schwarz Simpson The Register-Herald Wed Aug 19, 2009, 10:27 PM EDT

FAIRLEA — With Cora and Shannon as the stars, Elephant Encounter is drawing crowds at the State Fair of West Virginia.

“It gives people a real experience with creatures they will never see here. And it allows them to appreciate the vanishing breed,” Ryan Appel of Gap Mills said.

Bill Morris, a nationally acclaimed elephant trainer, and his wife, Cindy, own Elephant Encounter and he is the master of ceremonies for the show, which is both educational and entertaining.

“They are family elephants who have been cared for by the Morris family for many years. There are only two species of these animals left,” he said in his introduction of Cora, an Asian elephant, and Shannon, an African elephant.

“We’ve had Cora since she was 2 years old and Shannon since she was 18 months. Cora tips the scales at a hefty 9.000 pounds while Shannon weighs in at 6,500 pounds.

“She could live to be 70 or 80 years old or even over 100,” Morris of Cora, who is 49. He explained that Shannon, who is 27, will reach her maturity when she’s 30 to 35.

In his program presentation, Morris pointed out the uniqueness of the elephants’ ears, which are shaped like the two continents from which they originated.

“They have six sets of teeth. They have four sets in their mouth at any one time,” Morris, a third-generation elephant trainer, explained.

“All elephants have wrinkles. It’s part of their cooling system,” Morris told the audience.

When it was time for Cora and Shannon to take center stage, they wowed the crowd by balancing on a small table, doing some fancy dancing to the clapping of the crowd, gulping down a large jar of water, sampling some Kool-Aid and taking a nap to a lullaby.

“They drink from 20,000 to 25,000 gallons of water each year,” Morris said, throwing in another tidbit.

Elephant Encounter is based in Tampa, Fla., where the Morrises have their home and where Cora and Shannon have 8 acres to roam and a pool where they can swim and throw dirt and water.

“They think we are part of their herd and we know they are part of our family,” Morris said.

Elephant Encounter, a free show staged daily at 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., also features elephant rides.

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