My mother, Mary Manning and her niece Judy Beauregard with the original Benson’s Wild Animal Farm ‘lucky elephant, ‘sometime in the 1940s. Photograph copyright Janice W. Brown
A few months ago there was a flurry of stories about the large concrete elephant at Tufts University having finally fallen apart, with a new (and different) one being constructed to replace it. The disintegrated 10-foot elephant was a “lucky” one that originally sat at Benson’s Wild Animal Farm in Hudson, New Hampshire.
According to several published stories, the elephant was bought in 1993 by Tufts University alumni class of 1958 for $4,500 from Benson’s Animal farm to replace a former mascot (despite the fact that the new mascot was an Indian elephant, while the school’s original “Jumbo” was an African elephant). The original trunk of this cement elephant was dropped down (see photograph of original elephant on left). Arthur Provencher, who bought the park in 1979, replaced the trunk portion so that it would be ‘luckier’ by curling up instead of down.
