From the archives: This story was last updated in July 2019.
Two crippled former circus elephants named Shirley and Jenny had not set eyes on each other in two decades. When the two Asian elephants finally came trunk to trunk again after all that time, the bonding was immediate. Their reunion was beyond touching, nothing short of phenomenal. And the emotional encounter was captured on film.The reunion happened on the evening of July 6, 1999, at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. It had been more than two decades since Shirley and Jenny first met at a circus one winter in 1973. At the time, Jenny, an elephant born wild in Sumatra in 1972, was still an infant. Shirley took on the role of surrogate mother to her in the strange new land.
