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[MUSIC]
[JODY SEAY] Hello and welcome again to Back Page. I'm Jody Seay, and we're doing something
a little different today. Usually we talk about books, but today we're going to talk
about...elephants. [Background sounds of elephants] And the reason is this: My partner and I were
invited to go with some friends out to Wildlife Safari, which is in Winston Oregon, with is
Southern and South of and West of Roseburg. We did that, and this particular trip included
a private audience with the elephants, and the elephant keepers, and we had a grand time
and I've invited them to come here and talk about their program. So, this is Katie, she's
from Wildlife Safari, and welcome to the show.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here.
[JODY SEAY] Good. Now, tell us...Well, we fell in love with Alice, who's this unbelievably
sweet elephant.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes.
[JODY SEAY] But you have, what, three elephants there?
[KATIE ALAYAN] We have three, three African elephants at Wildlife Safari. Alice is our
matriarch, so she's the one you got to spend some time with. She's 43 years old. She weighs
about 8,300 pounds, about 8 feet, 8 inches tall at the shoulder, which is the highest
point for an African elephant, and she's pretty much your textbook African elephant - you
look up 'African elephant' in the dictionary, you've got a picture of Alice right there.
She's absolutely gorgeous; she's amazing. We also have George, who we call our 'Gentle
Giant.'
[JODY SEAY] And he's about twice her size...
[KATIE ALAYAN] He weighs about, he weighs over 14 thousand pounds now.
[JODY SEAY] Yeah. 'Cause I almost got a crick in my neck looking up at him.
[KATIE ALAYAN] [Laughing] Yes...
[JODY SEAY] But here's Alice...oh, and then here's George, like that.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes, he's giant. He's about 10 feet 4.
[JODY SEAY] Wow.
[KATIE ALAYAN] And the amazing thing with George, he's 32, but males will keep growing
into their forties, so he could get even larger than he is now. So, it's kind of a guessing
game with him -- we're not really sure how big he's going to get.
[JODY SEAY] And Alice helped raise him?
[KATIE ALAYAN] She did, yes. Alice has been at Wildlife Safari since she was about 2 years
old. All three of the elephants that we have were orphaned in the wild, so they were born
in South Africa and through whatever means, we're not sure, they lost their families.
So they came into human care at a very young age. Alice came to the park pretty much right
away after she had been orphaned, so she's been there her whole life -- it's home for
her. George came in about 26 years ago, and Alice did help raise him. When he came in,
he was a little itty-bitty thing, and then we had some other elephants at the park but
Alice was one of the main elephants that helped raise him, so they have a really great brother-sister
relationship.
[JODY SEAY] Wow.
[KATIE ALAYAN] It's a lot of fun to watch them together.
[JODY SEAY] Well, so now, how do you know how much to feed these guys? They eat about
200 pounds of food a day, right?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes, yes they do.
[JODY SEAY] Does he eat more than she does?
[KATIE ALAYAN] You know, he actually...he thinks he deserves more [Jody chuckles] He
tries to get as much as he can, but Alice does have a way of saying, you know, I am
your big sister, after all, this is my hay. Typically, how the elephants get fed is they
get what we term essentially a free choice of hay throughout the day. They usually eat
about 150 to 175 pounds of hay every day. So we give them access to that throughout
the day so that they're constantly eating small amounts of food. And then they also
get different supplements like we have a biscuit that's called 'elephant chow' and that has
a lot of good nutrients and vitamins in it. And then we give them some other vitamin-mineral
supplements to make sure that they're getting their vitamins the way that they should be,
and really for them it's more about just maintaining. We don't want George to get too big too quickly,
just like with any animal, a dog, if you have a large breed dog you want to manage their
growth so that you're not having them sprout up huge and then you can end up with different
health issues; so we carefully monitor him. We weigh them regularly to make sure that
they have a good growth rate, things like that. He went through a growth spurt about
five years ago where he was gaining about 100 pounds a month, so...
[JODY SEAY] Whoa... [KATIE ALAYAN] That was pretty impressive
when that was going on. He's slowed down quite a bit now so he's leveled off to be gaining
100 pounds every six to seven months or so now.
[JODY SEAY] So how long do you keep them? Do you keep them, like, forever?
[KATIE ALAYAN] The elephants stay with us forever, yes.
[JODY SEAY] Okay.
[KATIE ALAYAN] For our program at Wildlife Safari, we have Alice and George who are basically
our founding members, and then we recently, about four months ago in February, we brought
in Tava; she came to us from a facility in northern California -- Six Flags Discovery
Kingdom in Vallejo. They knew we were looking for another elephant and they were looking
for a good home for Tava, and so they came and visited us, we visited them, and Tava
came to us and we've been working with her with Alice and George and really they've just
bonded together beautifully.
[JODY SEAY] They all get along.
[KATIE ALAYAN] They, it's really, really fun to watch -- they're just like old friends.
You now, initially, whenever you're doing any kind of animal introduction, even with
your dogs and cats at home if you get a new puppy you're always a little apprehensive
for that first introduction when they see each other. What's gonna happen? And it was
like old news to them. They just kind of stood next to each other, they fell asleep next
to one another and were eating hay next to one another, which is exactly what we wanted
to see, and so we just, one day just a few days after Tava had arrived about a week late
we just decided to go ahead and open the gates and see what they would do. They made some
great contact noises. Elephants will make a rumble, a very deep sound - if you can imagine
a cat as big as an elephant purring, it's almost that kind of a sound.
[JODY SEAY] Really?
[KATIE ALAYAN] And they -- it's a contact noise, it's an "I'm ok, you're ok, everything's
good" noise. And so they did a little bit of that, and then they just calmed right down,
started eating hay again. So...
[JODY SEAY] You know, our little dog, you can't get -- we found a puppy [Katie laughs]
We found a puppy, we had it in the car, just a little, we hadn't driven fifty yards and
our dog was like [growling noise] You know, it's like...
[KATIE ALAYAN] [Laughs] Exactly...
[JODY SEAY] Anyway...
[KATIE ALAYAN] Elephants are...you know, these elephants, again, because of how they were
raised - they were orphaned, but they were raised around other elephants so they understand
that they are elephants, and that's critical. A lot of times when you hand raise an animal,
the animal can have a little bit of an identity crisis. Am I actually a person or am I an
elephant? They have a little bit of trouble with that. But since they were raised with
othe elephants, they understood that they had elephantine, but they also developed a
very strong bond with people because people were taking such good care of them and so
that really helped bring our program together in what it is today, which is really, we believe,
bringing people and elephants together to help elephants in the wild. We believe that
our elephants are ambassadors for their cousins.
[JODY SEAY] Yeah. Well, you know that I was looking up things online and there's a foundation,
David Seldrick or something like that -- David Sheldrick foundation which was set up to help
animals, especially orphaned animals in I think Kenya, wasn't it?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes.
[JODY SEAY] Anyway, it's all pretty fascinating, and you were telling me that you have five
staff members that take care of the elephants?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes, we do.
[JODY SEAY] And, so who does what, exactly? 'Cause you were there that day and told us
all about the animals and I thought how in the world does she know all this stuff? [Katie
laughs] And the other thing that you would do was like when Alice would drop her trunk
and you would say, 'Hold, Alice' and she would just wrap her trunk around the bar.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yup.
[JODY SEAY] And I guess that's to keep her trunk from smacking somebody, or... [Katie
laughs] I mean, why do you do that?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Well what we do is we always like to make sure that the elephants have
really good manners. Just like, again, a great analogy, your dog at home, you don't want
your dog to be jumping up on people when they walk through the front door; you'd like your
dog to be polite and sit, and elephants are very, very large animals, so what we like
to do is make sure that they have really great manners, and the best way to do them sis to
have them be really well trained and mind the people who are working with them really
well, and the way that we do that is mostly through our relationship with those elephants.
We spend so much time at the barn with the elephants that we've really established a
really positive working relationship with them and they trust us and we trust them.
That being said, we also work with them every day, we train them every day, and we use what's
called positive reinforcement so when the elephant does something good it gets a reward,
like a carrot or a yam or something like that, so that means the elephant's going to want
to continue to offer that behavior. So the reason that we train the elephants actually
to hold on to the bar like that is for a couple different reasons. It gives the elephant something
to do so that they are not just standing there wondering what's happening next, it gives
them a job, something to keep them engaged. But, actually, the primary reason we started
doing it was because we have a lot of children that come down to the barn, and a lot of times,
we really want to make sure that those kids have a really positive experience with the
elephants, and sometimes elephants can be scary for little ones because they're so big.
So what we've learned is that if the elephant is holding on to the bar, they're pretty stationary,
and that can be something that gives the kid a little bit of security. The elephant isn't
moving very much so I can come up and give it a pat on the trunk, and that's something
that, again, we really want to bring people together with the elephants because we think
that's going to make a difference for them in the wild.
[JODY SEAY] Well, you know, that was a magical moment for me, to be able to put my hands
on her trunk and just feel that, and look in that big eye, which was so gentle and so
kind and... ahh! Anyway, it was, it was really something. Hey, if you're just tuning, lucky
for your because this is Back Page, again, and I'm Jody Seay and we're talking with Katie
who's visiting us from Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon, and we're talking about elephants
because, um, we fell in love with elephants a couple of months ago and there you have
it. Now, talk to me about the regular day. You come to work, and different things have
to happen on different days or do you do the same thing every day?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Most of our routine is the same from day to day. So the summer routine
is a little bit different from the wintertime routine just because it weather dependent.
When it's warm enough, starting in usually about late April, early May, we can start
leaving the elephants out overnight, and that's -- the elephants get to stay outside in the
yards all night long, 24-7. We have cameras that we can actually check from home, so we're
sitting at home making sure the elephants are ok. We'll also come back in and do night
feeds with them. But with that routine it's pretty straightforward. We come in in the
morning, we get their chows mixed up so those supplements I was talking about we give them
a breakfast chow and we give them a dinner chow and it's got all their supplements mixed
in there for them and they love it -- it's delicious oatmeal porridge for them, they
can't wait to get their chow. SO we do that, we go out and train the elephants for a while,
work them on some different behaviors and then the real work starts: we start cleaning.
Elephants only digest about 40 percent of what they eat, so that means 60 percent comes
out the other end...
[JODY SEAY] Oh boy...
[KATIE ALAYAN] ...so there's a lot of shoveling that we do, but we get that all taken care
of, take about...
[JODY SEAY] So that's about 120 pounds worth of poop.
[KATIE ALAYAN] If not more [laughs]
[JODY SEAY] From each animal? Per day?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes.
[JODY SEAY] I mean, if they're ingesting 200 pounds of food...
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yep. Yes, it's...it's a labor of love.
[JODY SEAY] Well, I ... [chuckles] I take my hat off to you. [Katie laughs]
[KATIE ALAYAN] We love every part of our jobs, but, yeah, the cleaning is a big part of it.
So then once, especially again in the summertime, that's our busy season in terms of when we
get guests coming in, so we start getting ready for our different encounters, our different
venues, things like that. We have encounters where people get to come down to the barn
like you did, where you get to meet the elephants, pet 'em, feed 'em, the elephants show off
some different behaviors. We give people an opportunity to ask questions, learn about
the elephants; we believe in putting out a lot of conservation messages and making sure
that people realize that elephants are having a really hard time right now, and everything
that we can do to help them is something positive.
[JODY SEAY] Yeah.
[KATIE ALAYAN] So we believe in really putting that forward, that foot forward, whenever
we do an encounter. We also have a rally fun venue that e do in the summertime called the
Elephant Car Wash [Jody chuckles] where you can come down to the barn and the elephant
will wash your car for you. That's a lot of fun. Alice and George do that venue for us
and they've each developed their own styles. We call Alice our Window Washer and George
is our Pressure Washer. [Jody laughs] So, depending on which elephant you have wash
your car that day, you might want to come back and get another one from -- need for
the other experience.
[JODY SEAY] Well, they both have their own, particular styles when they paint
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes, exactly.
[JODY SEAY] Because they sell these, pottery, that's been painted by Alice or George, which
is, I mean... And it's, it's very distinct -- they each have their own style.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Exactly. Each one, and...each flower pot that we paint, they're called 'ele-plants'
[background noise begins] and they're a special little deal that we're doing as a fundraiser
because we're trying to build the elephants a new exhibit expansion, and so the ele-plants
are a part of that. All the money that we raise from the ele-plant sales goes into a
fund specifically dedicated towards that exhibit expansion. But each one is painted one of
the elephants, and it comes with a little tag that tells you which elephant painted
it, it also tells you a little bit our where the money is going which is always fun for
people. It has a little picture of the elephant on it.
[JODY SEAY] Well, you guys are building, raising money now to build a big pond for them.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes.
[JODY SEAY] And water's important to elephants...
[KATIE ALAYAN] Very much so.
[JODY SEAY] They like to roll around in it, they like to swim in it, and they like to
squirt each other with it, and whatever.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Exactly. And that's where our car wash really came from, is we know that
elephants love to play in water, so we wanted to integrate the car wash into their world
because it's a fun venue for them and for guests. But as you're saying, the water is
really, really important for the elephants, and they really enjoy it. We actually used
to have a pool- we do have a pool at the park that was built for the elephants, but due
to some policy changes we can no longer take them to that pool, so we have to build them
a pool closer to home. [sounds of elephants and water] So we're really, really excited
about that, we're really hopeful. We're hopeful that we can get some different community members
involved to help really get the project done, because we really want to see this, see this
happen for our elephants.
[JODY SEAY] Oh, I hope it does. You know, I was watching a National Geographic special
one time about an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, where they take elephants when they retire,
and there was an elephant named Judy and she was retiring from some carnival and this tiny
little black man took care of her. He called her his big girl, 'my big girl.' And he gave
her a bath every day, and he rode in the big moving van with her down to Tennessee and
he realized the next morning that this was the last day he'd be able to give her a bath,
and- this will make me cry. I cry easily, but... And she had misbehaved as a youngster
and they put a shackle with a chain on her foot, and he took it off and he was in tears
and he said I don't know who the first person was to put that chain on her, but I'm glad
I'm the last one to take it off. You know? It was, ohhh... [Katie laughs] Anyway, but
the next night another elephant came whose name was Judy, and Judy and Shirley had known
each other when Judy was a baby, and they trumpeted like all night, and actually bent
the bars on their enclosure trying to get to each other. I mean, they're like best pals,
you know? And so the end of the show you saw Judy and Shirley lying in this pond, at the
edge of this pond, and they're, you know, rolling around in the mud and they're squirting
water on each other back and forth, and it was so dear, so I really hope this works for
you.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yes. We're very eager to make it happen and we know we will make it happen.
For us it's really, it isn't a matter of if; it's a matter of when., because we're very
dedidcated to making sure that they get this expansion.
[JODY SEAY] So if people want to find out more information about all the projects you
have going on for the elephants at Wildlife Safari, what do they do? Who do they contact?
[KATIE ALAYAN] You can go to our website -- it's www.wildlifesafari.net, and we've got different
'Contact Us' sections on there, you can just click on the 'Contact Us' and send the information
in. Another thing that you can do, um, a direct e-mail address is development director at
wildlifesafari.net and she can forward any information on to you from there.
[JODY SEAY] Well, I tell you, if people go and spend some time with the, with Alice,
you know? It melts your heart. It's just, she's so, so sweet, so kind. It's just a such
a, I don't know, it's just so...big...like a big honor to get to spend the time with
her.
[KATIE ALAYAN] It is. Exactly.
[JODY SEAY] And watch her and...but, gosh, what a day!
[KATIE ALAYAN] And that's really, again, what we really believe in doing, because your experience
that you had, and that emotional connection that you made with Alice, that's something
that you're going to remember for the rest of your life and it's gonna make you feel
differently about elephants.
[JODY SEAY] Yeah.
[KATIE ALAYAN] If you're ever given an opportunity to buy ivory, or to participate in a conservation
effort for elephants, you're gonna remember that ivory has come from a dead elephant and
that's not something that we want to support. If you ever have, it's one of our biggest
messages, never buy ivory, because if we don't buy it there's going to be no demand for it.
[JODY SEAY] Right.
[KATIE ALAYAN] We're losing elephants, African elephants at about twenty-five thousand ever
year. Twenty-five thousand every year. There's only a wild population of five hundred thousand
left.
[JODY SEAY] That just breaks your heart, you know?
[KATIE ALAYAN] For us, it's...we will not lose these animals. We will not. And, again,
bringing people together with them is a way that we believe that we can really make that
change, and it's so important that we really make those strides forward to help these animals
so that we don't lose them.
[JODY SEAY] Yeah. You know, we lost one in Portland a few years ago, it was a foot disease
of some sort.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yeah.
[JODY SEAY] You guys don't have any trouble with that?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Well, you know, it really depends on the individual elephant again. Our elephants,
we have three beautiful elephants, we're very lucky that they're very, very healthy. We
believe strongly in a lot of exercise, a lot of stimulation to help keep them healthy,
so like I was saying before, having them outside overnight in the summertime, that's a lot
of natural wear and tear on their feet, which is what their feet need. They need a lot of
walking, a lot of working on those feet to help keep them healthy. So, for us, that's
really what we look for is really keeping them physically active to help maintain that;
and then that being said, we also do foot work on them on a regular basis. We check
their feet every day. They have- their feet are a very interesting structure. A lot of
people don't realize elephants actually walk on their tip-toes.
[JODY SEAY] Really?
[KATIE ALAYAN] So, if you look at structure of an elephant's foot, it basically looks
like this; these are their toes, and there's a thick pad, calloused, fibrous pad cushion
that's under their heel, so that when they walk it expands. So it's like they're just
walking on air. An elephant exerts less force on the ground than a woman in high heels,
if you can believe that. [Jody chuckles] I mean, it's amazing - their feet are just these
incredible structures. So, what we do when we're doing foot care, it's very similar to
a horse's, horse, hoof-care, farrier work. They have nails, so we shorten their nails
up with a rasp, like a farrier would shorten a hoof with a rasp, and then the pad on the
bottom of the foot is a thick, calloused pad, and they'll have tread in that pad, just natural
tread like you'd have on your sneakers and that helps them grip on the ground. Every
elephant has different patterns on their feet, and what we'll do is we'll open up those tread;
we'll make sure there's no rocks or no debris that gets stuck in there, so we make sure
that their feet stay nice and healthy.
[JODY SEAY] Wow. There's just so much to know. Did you know all this stuff when you went...
[KATIE ALAYAN] I had no clue. I had no clue when I started.
[JODY SEAY] So how long have you been with Wildlife Safari now?
[KATIE ALAYAN] I've been at the park going on eight, seven or eight years. I started
in 2006, and I learned everything, 99 percent of what I've learned, I've learned from Dinah,
who's our elephant manager. She's been working with elephants for over 30 years.
[JODY SEAY] Wow.
[KATIE ALAYAN] And she's worked in a variety of places with a variety of elephants, and
she's a true professional. And she's an amazing teacher, so somebody that really- and she's
really good at teaching our staff. So foot- I had no idea about foot work when I started
and so she taught me. She taught me what to do an what to look for and what to see, and
as I've gone through the ranks and now I've farther up in the hierarchy if you will, so
now I start teaching people about footwork. Dinah's still there, still instructing and
letting people know how to do different things. But with elephants in particular, we're...there's
not very many elephant caretakers in the country, let alone in the world, so we're a very tight-knit
community, we're very close to one another, and we do a lot of conferences and meetings
to make sure that we're really all on the same page with what the best care practices
are and how best to take care of these animals. So there's a lot of work that goes into communicating
that. The Elephant Managers Association, for example, does a great job of bringing people
together. The hold and annual conference and everybody stands up and can give papers and
presentations and workshops and things like that and it's really what makes a difference
is people coming together for elephants.
[JODY SEAY] So how, when you mentioned supplements and stuff earlier, how do you know what supplements
are the best for them, you know?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Right. There's not a lot of elephant-specific supplements out there. Elephant
digestion is very similar to horse digestion, so we typically use very similar supplements
that you're gonna see for a horse. So then you just extrapolate, a lot of times you just
extrapolate the weight out, so while a horse might get this dose because they're 1000 pounds,
you're gonna multiply that by eight because the elephant needs to get eight times that
since they're 8000 pounds. That being said, we've learned more about elephants in the
last ten years than we have in the last 100. We are learning so much about elephants and
elephant care and what they need and their different, um, different methods for taking
care of them, all those different things. We're learning so much, just their reproduction
alone, we've learn- we've made huge strides forward in how elephants reproduce, and that's
really vital information for wild populations that's come primarily from elephants that
are in human care situations, because they're trained to give us blood; they're trained
to allow us to do a lot of different things that you're not going to be able to do with
a wild elephant. So we've learned so much...
[JODY SEAY] How do you get- How do you get blood out of them? That's- I mean, that skin
is really thick...
[KATIE ALAYAN] It's, you know it's- actually, I have a harder time giving blood than our
elephants do [laughs] They are trained to do it; so we take blood from two places primarily.
They have a wide network of veins on the backs of their ears that they use for heat exchange,
that's one of their cooling mechanisms, so that's one place that you can take blood from
them. The skin on the backs of their ears is actually pretty thin, so you just slide
the little butterfly needle into the vein, they don't even notice it, and then you get
your blood samples that way. Another place you can take blood is from their back leg.
There's a vein that crosses in front and you can get it from there also.
[JODY SEAY] Okay.
[KATIE ALAYAN] But, again, they're trained to do it, and they're...it's a non-event for
them, which is really important. We participate in a lot of research projects, strictly through
blood, so we take blood from our elephants every two weeks and it's banked, and then
that way different researchers can use the different samples for different studies, if
they're trying to look at this type of reproductive hormone, or if they're looking at this type
of hormone or this type of element in your blood, they have a lot of different samples
to pull from.
[JODY SEAY] Has there ever been a baby-baby elephant there at Wildlife Safari?
[KATIE ALAYAN] The babies were the ones when they first came in; so when Alice came in
about forty years ago, they were the babies when they came in. We haven't had a baby actually
born at Wildlife Safari.
[JODY SEAY] Were they, I mean, were they really small then, or were they...?
[KATIE ALAYAN] Two-year-old, a two-year-old is probably gonna be about that tall or so.
[JODY SEAY] Yeah? Ohh...
[KATIE ALAYAN] Maybe a little bit taller, depending. They're- they're adorable.
[JODY SEAY] They are cute [laughs]
[KATIE ALAYAN] They just are adorable. Usually when they're born, they're about 250 to 300
pounds as average for a baby elephant when they're born, so they'll put on a pound a
day during that first growth spurt.
[JODY SEAY] So, now, once again, Wildlife Safari- this is in Winston Oregon.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Winston, Oregon.
[JODY SEAY] If you're going south on I5 you go west on...
[KATIE ALAYAN] You take exit 119, and then there's signs, you just follow the signs straight
to Wildlife Safari.
[JODY SEAY] It's just a couple of miles west.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Yeah, it's just a few miles down the road.
[JODY SEAY] Okay, and one more time, give me the website.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Website is www.wildlifesafari.net. We've got some different links on there that
you'd be able to find, there's also a 'Contact Us' page on there so if you have any other
questions or not sure where you want to direct your information you can go ahead and use
that. And the other thing with this water hole project that's really exciting is it's
just phase one. So, we are in the process right now of designing and developing what
we're calling Tembo Trek. Tembo is the Swahili word for elephant. So, what we're very excited
about is the fact that Wildlife Safari has an enormous amount of acreage. We actually
own about 600 acres, only 400 of those acres have been developed, so we have a lot of acreage
that's still left that we could fence off for the elephants. So that's really what this
next phase is going to be. Phase one is the water hole, where we're going to be able to
get the elephants into this splash pond and let them have a pool to play in. [Music begins
in the background] It's gonna be big enough that all three of our elephants can go in
there, splash around, play...
[JODY SEAY] Talk about water displacement...
[KATIE ALAYAN] That's right [laughs]
[JODY SEAY] Well, listen, we're gonna have to wrap it up, but thank you so much for joining
us.
[KATIE ALAYAN] Thank you.
[JODY SEAY] And I'm Jody Seay, this is Back Page. Join us again next time as we take another
peek at the back page -- or the back side of the elephant. [Katie laughs] Remember:
We're all in this together, more the same than different. Do your best. Thanks Katie...
[KATIE ALAYAN] Thank you so much.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]