Ten Butterflies

 

It began with a suggestion from a local newspaper: the children of Salt Lake could pool their money and buy an elephant from a passing circus for the small zoo inside Liberty Park. At the time, the most exotic exhibit in the park was the monkey enclosure. $3,250 in donations were gathered, and Princess Alice – along with her longtime handler – left the circus life. Her enclosure was rather small, but she was occasionally let out to help with landscaping or road work, and from time to time she took “field trips” to local schools. Princess Alice, not content with her sanctioned outings, frequently went on walkabout on her own, helping herself to produce from neighboring gardens and pilfering laundry that was hung out to dry. It was these excursions that prompted the zoo to move from Liberty Park to its current location on land donated by the Hogle family. Princess Alice died in 1953 at the presumed age of sixty-nine.