What Does the Oregon Zoo Do With a 12,000-Pound Carcass?

Packy deserves our sympathy, but curious minds wonder: What does the Oregon Zoo do with a 12,000-pound carcass?
—Animal Lover

Combining as it does a legitimate, topical curiosity with a certain juvenile morbidness, this question is a natural fit for this column. That said, I know where you guys are going with this, and it's not happening.

People seem to assume that Packy's demise would have represented the first time zookeepers ever had to move an unconscious or incapacitated elephant, and must have presented a unique and nearly insurmountable challenge. Surely, drastic measures must have been called for?

Nice try, freaks. As much as I'm sure it will disappoint you to hear, this was not an exploding whale* scenario.

Moving an elephant may not be as easy as whistling Rover into his crate, but it does come up from time to time, and there's an accepted way to do it: You put a sling around the animal to support it, then lift the sling with a hydraulic hoist or crane.

As to the disposition of Packy's remains—well, we kind of lucked out there, because in a lot of cases a dead zoo animal's body is pretty grim.

There's usually a necropsy, which is invasive, to say the least. After that, the decedent is parted out to various researchers, some of whom may have requested specific tissue samples while the animal was still alive. Whatever is left over is cremated.

However, Packy's fans will be relieved to learn that none of that happened to him. There was no necropsy, and Packy was buried entirely in what officials called "a peaceful, wooded area" in an undisclosed location, so you degenerates can't do to his grave what you did to Jim Morrison's.

*A mainstay of Oregon legendaria, the "exploding whale" was a 1970 incident in which the Oregon Department of Transportation tried to dispose of a beached whale using dynamite. We've covered it here.

QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.