Anchorage Daily News

After years of controversy, Maggie, a 25-year-old African elephant, flew out of Anchorage Thursday night on a one-way ticket to the Performing Animal Welfare Society facility in California.

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Maggie, Alaska's only elephant, left on a C-17 military plane normally used to transport tanks, Stryker vehicles and smaller airplanes. The giant cargo jet took off into the dark Alaska sky at 7:34 p.m., carrying its unusual cargo south to a new life.

As she was lifted onto the plane, Maggie trumpeted twice, said Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Kelley Jeter, "almost like to say goodbye."

The 16-hour process of moving the elephant began in early afternoon when she walked her 8,000 pounds into her special moving crate at the zoo, just as she trained for weeks to do.

A crane then lifted the crated elephant into the air and onto a flatbed truck that transported her to Elmendorf Air Force Base, where a crowd of about 40 onlookers waited to see her off, including military personnel, media, and representatives from Friends of Maggie, a group that worked for five years to move her south.

Penelope Wells, who spearheaded the group, wiped tears from her eyes and videotaped the long-awaited event.

Maggie was barely visible through gaps in the heated steel crate, but she kept sticking her trunk through a peephole at the cage's bottom, where handlers shoved treats to her.

"In some ways this is less complicated because she's not as big as a tank (and other military equipment)," said Lt. Gen. Doug Fraser. "In other ways, it's more, because it's a live animal."

The Air Force crew on the aircraft were taking special precautions with Maggie, he said: for example, modifying the takeoff and landing techniques to keep the plane as flat as possible.

Maggie should arrive at PAWS this morning, where she will be placed in a barn separated by steel bars from four other female African elephants. It's for her protection.

The sanctuary houses Asian elephants as well, but co-founder and president of PAWS Pat Derby says they are much older than the Africans: "To put those two together would sort of be like sending a street gang into the senior center."

From a PAWS handler who has spent the last three weeks with Maggie, Derby expects Maggie to be a little ornery.

"She gets frustrated and becomes angry and can sort of explode. Then it all goes away," she said.

Derby said that when Maggie first meets the other elephants, she expects there to be a lot of fuss from all of them -- trumpeting, swaying of trunks, squawking. Maggie has not seen another elephant since 1997, when Anabelle, the Alaska Zoo's other elephant, died.

Thursday's transportation project, Operation Maggie Migration, was only the second time in recent memory that the Air Force has stepped in to move a large animal. In 1998, the Air Force moved the killer whale Keiko from Oregon to Iceland, also on a C-17, because it was the only plane big enough to accommodate the animal.

In Maggie's case, no commercial plane could fit her 10-foot-tall crate.

The airplane ride alone is costing $200,000. The overall trip is expected to total almost $400,000, Derby said.

For years, the Alaska Zoo battled opponents who said Maggie should be moved to a warmer climate and be with other elephants, a trend in elephant care that zoos across the country are following. This past spring, the zoo board of directors voted to move her after the controversy reheated when Maggie fell ill and could not get up after lying down.

As Maggie was loaded into the airplane around 6:30 p.m., a small group of military children and military personnel waved and shouted, "Goodbye, Maggie!"

Maggie trumpeted one final time, and the door closed.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.