Nandi notebook: At 8 months, Nandi hits the pool

Each month, as Nandi bounds closer to her first birthday on Aug. 20, we will keep you in the know on what’s new with this precious pachyderm’s progress.

Sue Tygielski, Reid Park Zoo’s elephant manager, has the skinny on Tucson’s big baby.

Age: Eight months on Monday, April 20.

Weight: 775 pounds. Yep, she’s one big baby.

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Little sis, big bro: The new pounds mean a new playmate. Nandi and her 4-year-old brother, Sundzu, have taken to palling around lately. “She is now old enough to begin to wrestle a little, and Sundzu has started to seek her out to play,” Tygielski says in an email. “They also end up in the wallow together playing.” Nandi loves her some mud. While the younger sibs romp, 8-year-old Punga is trying out maturity and hanging with the adults, “leaving Sundzu and Nandi to play uninterrupted,” Tygielski says. “She follows him around more than Punga — it’s really sweet.”

Struggling to stay serious: “She is learning to be more calm around trainers,” Tygielski says. “We are trying to spend time with her when she keeps all feet on the ground when she is near us. If she starts climbing the cable fence, we step away from her. We only approach her if she is calm. She seems to be understanding that criteria (maybe?).” The next training step is increasing how long Nandi can keep cool with her trainers. It’s difficult for Nandi “not to climb and be silly,” Tygielski says. “But for our safety and hers, we can only work with her when she is a little calm and focused.”

Everybody into the pool: As summer approaches, the pool entices. In the last month, Nandi has taken a few swimming lessons. “Her first time in, Semba, her mom, got all the way in to the deep area,” Tygielski says. “Nandi waited on the shore, and when she decided to get in, she ran fast. What Nandi did not know is the pool is graduated and with flat areas and gradually gets deeper. She ran all the way out to the deep area and sunk. But a few seconds of waiting and her trunk came to the surface. She bounced around in the pool, surrounded by her mom and two brothers. Immediately after getting out of the pool after swimming for several minutes, she hit the dirt hill and covered her body in dirt, like her mom. Dirt protects from sun and insects.”

For several days, Nandi kept her distance from the pool. Tygielski says her first swim may have left her “a little startled.” But with mom and brothers enjoying some pool time, Nandi gave it a second chance. “This second time she really swam around and seemed to have a better sense of what the pool was about,” Tygielski says. “She truly looked like she was having fun.”