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but despite the excitement, david knows that working with the world s largest land animals is inherently risky. david is warned about one elephant in particular. cindy had a lot of crazy behaviors with other keepers in the past. a known danger to humans, only keepers who had trained cindy when she arrived from a tacoma, washington, zoo are allowed to get close to the animal. newcomers like david always use the matriarch elephant nina as a shield. for two years he keeps his distance from cindy. but on that day in january, he notices she s a little too close for comfort. cindy was next to the gate. i needed to get her moved. in the process of moving cindy, i opened the gate. and i should have closed the gate behind me. but david doesn t close the gate. a mistake that will almost cost him his life. just moments later he senses he s in trouble. i just had a feeling that she was going to come after me. ....
So i yelled for help. hey bob! and right when i yelled hey bob, she ran after me. she knew the terror in my voice. with 10,000 pounds of angry elephant heading straight for him, david lunges for the quickest escape route. the fastest way was diving under the belly of another elephant, so i can have a buffer between me and her. i did that. she hit the side of that elephant, and i was able to go through the fence. at this moment, david makes a fateful decision. he turns back to close the gate. it was really just instinct. it wasn t like i was trying to be a hero and try to save the public. i saw the gate open, i knew what my job was. i was trying to contain the elephant. but cindy is too quick for the keeper. she pushes the gate with her enormous head as this tourist catches it all on camera. ....
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This tourist catches it all on camera. he s thrown against the side of the block wall building. and then she comes after him. and i looked up and saw cindy running right at me. and that will never leave my mind. that was terrifying. he couldn t get away from her. i thought she would kill him. hearing david s screams, the other keepers rush to the rescue yelling cindy s name. eventually the elephant backs away. and david dives into a moat howelling in agony. while i was laying in the moat, i realized i was alive, the adrenaline wore off and the pain kicked in, then i could really feel horrendous pain. i felt like everything in my body was broken. i damaged disks in my lower back, broke my clavicle, lost a half inch in my arm. despite his injuries, in one sense david is lucky. she sends him flying with her trunk before her head hits the 2500 pound steel gate. ....
the most amazing thing is had her trunk not come through that fence and her head just hit the gate, i could have easily died because the gate would have hit me square in the head. david spends eight days in the hospital and undergoes seven months of rehab. eventually he s able to return to the zoo, but not to the elephants. after my rehabilitation, i was offered a job back with the elephants, and i thought i d give it a try. so i went out into the field and i walked around the elephants and i greeted them. but once i heard the shuffling of the feet of the elephants, my heart started palpitating. i knew that wasn t going to be the right environment for me to be in. as for cindy after my attack, is very next day she went after and tried to attack another keeper. he was able to get through the fence. and cindy took it out on his wheelbarrow and she flattened it like a pancake. cindy is soon returned to her former home in tacoma, where she remains until her death. it s been m ....