![]() ![]() In the early 2010s, a Spanish animal rights organisation, Faada, had begun petitioning the Spanish authorities to take Dumba away from the Kludskys, on the basis that it was cruel to keep her in such a small enclosure with no other elephants for company. But the Kludskys told Andrés that animal rights activists were making the family’s life hell. Visiting the Kludskys in June 2018, the journalist Albert San Andrés found that the neighbours were delighted to have an elephant next door – their local “diva”, as one put it – and children would come out from the nearby town to see her. To give Dumba exercise they would lead her into an adjacent patch of oak forest where she could forage and wander. When the family was at home, their “daughter” lived in an outdoor pen of about 500 sq metres – the size of two tennis courts – surrounded by an electric fence. “She is our daughter and we are her herd,” Kruse likes to say. Yvonne, whose professional name is Yvonne Kruse, is a fourth-generation circus performer, while George is sixth-generation circus, and they have worked with Dumba for 41 years, since she was brought to Europe from Asia at the age of two. Until recently, they had spent at least half of the year, travelling across Europe with Dumba, performing in circuses and zoos or hiring her out for media work – including a TV ad in which she lumbered gracefully across a mattress to demonstrate the product’s durability (“A Pikolin can take anything”). Set amid farmland and hills, the property forms part of a secluded residential development. The Kludskys’ home is on the outskirts of Caldes de Montbui, a spa town north of Barcelona. The family had spent much of their lives on the road, but this time they did not know how long they would be gone, or if they would ever return. Dumba went willingly, as always it was her owners who dragged their feet. O ne day in late September 2020, the Kludsky family – Yvonne, a slim, blond woman in her 60s, her husband, George, who is over 80 but still fit and strong, and their son Martyn – led their elephant up a ramp into the 10-metre trailer that constituted her second home. ![]()
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