Story archive: Relive an entire year with Nandi

Reid Park Zoo's pachyderm princess entered the world on Wednesday night to fanfare from her herd.

When 24-year-old African elephant Semba gave birth at 10:55 p.m. in a pen outside of her barn, adult female Lungile and the calf’s 7-year-old brother Punga watched from an adjacent paddock. Sundzu, now the 3-year-old middle child, was with mom for the arrival of his sister, said Vivian VanPeenen, the zoo's education curator.

“They could see the birth and were smelling and trumpeting and reaching through and caressing the baby,” VanPeenen said. “It was lovely. They were very interested in what was happening.”

After almost two years of pregnancy, on Tucson's 239th birthday, Semba delivered a little miracle — no, not a flying elephant — but the first elephant calf born in Reid Park Zoo and the state of Arizona, VanPeenen said. 

The calf's father is the zoo's bull Mabu, who also fathered Punga and Sundzu. The baby joins the three males, her mother and another adult female, Lungile. The herd moved from the San Diego Zoo Safari Park to the renovated Expedition Tanzania habitat in 2012.

A name for the bundle of joy will come after zookeepers have spent several days getting to know her. The rest of the herd have names reflecting their African heritage.

“Right now we’re calling her, ‘She’s here! The baby! The calf!’ ” VanPeenen said.

For the next 48 to 72 hours, keepers are giving mom and baby space to bond in the Click Family Elephant Care Center. Only essential staff have access.

On Thursday, the calf weighed in at 245 pounds. Typically, elephant calves weigh between 200 and 250 pounds.

Both mother and daughter appear healthy. Mom is eating, drinking and, well, taking care of business, and baby is nursing, though she is still trying to figure out the finer points.

“It takes a calf a while to figure out where to nurse,” VanPeenen said. “She nursed within the hour. She walks up to mom and fumbles. ‘Do I nurse here or there?’ But she’s doing great.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Semba spent time on exhibit with the rest of the herd, chowing down but moving slowly. At about 10:35 p.m., this pregnancy pro began demonstrating signs of active labor — stretching, walking backward, laying down and extending her tail. Twenty minutes later, with no human help, the zoo welcomed Semba’s third little one, who stood up within minutes.

The gender of the calf was unknown until her birth, but there was some girl talk. At a baby shower in June, both a Plinko-style game played by guests and Mabu's pick of a pink stick instead of a blue one predicted a girl. 

There will be another celebration when the calf goes on exhibit for the public, which could be in roughly two weeks. That depends on the strength and health of calf and mother, VanPeenen said. 

In future days, keepers will give the two elephants additional space in a behind-the-scenes area and eventually introduce the rest of the herd. 

For Sundzu, who VanPeenen calls, “a bit of a mama’s boy,” zoo staff have gradually increased his time away from mom to help him adjust to his new role as big brother, and he recently gave up nursing. Young, male elephants typically stay with mom for eight to 15 years, and females never leave.

The zoo plans to keep mother and daughter together, and there are still several years before Punga and Sundzu begin showing bachelor-pad-worthy tendencies that make them suitable for mating at other zoos.

The Expedition Tanzania habitat was built to support breeding elephants. The three adult elephants were rescued in the wild from culling in Swaziland and were transported to San Diego in 2003. 

“We are doing this for the future of elephant population and conservation worldwide,” VanPeenen said. “We are thrilled to have one more baby elephant in the world instead of one less.”

Meet Nandi.

The Caliente poll brought in 7,880 votes by noon Tuesday, with 65 percent of those votes for Nandi and 35 percent for Imvula.

Nandi (Nahn-dee), which is a common siSwati name for girls and means “sweet” or “fun” in the Zulu language beat Imvula (im-VOO-lah), with the nickname Immie, meaning “rain” in siSwati to honor her monsoon-season birth.

Elephant keepers who have spent the most time with her say the name suits her, though some were Team Imvula.

This 300-plus pound baby has a heavy load to carry. She’s the first female among two brothers, the first elephant born at the Reid Park Zoo, and the first elephant born in the state of Arizona.

“Even as a child, I loved elephants, and I am so thrilled that we now have a beautiful baby girl elephant here in Tucson. ..” says Green Valley reader Ann Gillingham in an email after voting for Nandi. “That is why it was so worthwhile to have the opportunity to help choose her name, something that I have never been able to do before.”

Eugene Schiffert, a retired postal worker, says in an email that the baby looks like a “Nandi” and that “every cute baby needs a name.”

Her naming is one of many milestones. First steps, snacks and baths — all of it is special for a new baby. And when you’re a petite pachyderm that trots through the zoo and into our hearts, we want to know about that first mud wallow, too.

Good thing she’s strong, healthy and ready to delight. Here are just a few of this baby’s firsts.

Water

For little Nandi, every puddle is mud-wallow worthy.

Rainy days mean Slip ‘N Slides, and when it gets too wet, Mom makes the perfect umbrella.

“I’ve never cared about weather so much until caring for these elephants,” says Sue Tygielski, the zoo’s elephant manager. “Is it too puddly? Is it too chilly? You worry about them slipping, but that is her favorite thing to do. She runs into the wet grass and slides into it. I don’t know why I’m so worried about her.”

Her first shower about two days after birth sent her four legs sprawling in opposite directions on the wet concrete “like a dog on ice,” Tygielski says.

This baby loves water.

“Any time there is a puddle or she is by the drinking trough, her mom will splash the water on them to cool down, and she just dives into it and kneels down and rolls over,” Tygielski says. “We’ve given her tiny tubs of water, and she tries to climb in.”

Food

Now about 1 month old, Nandi keeps her keepers on the go. If she sleeps longer than 30 minutes, her mom Semba wakes her up to nurse. She nurses for about one hour and 30 minutes each day, in intervals.

Nutrition will come solely from nursing for about six months, and she will continue to nurse long after that, but sticks and leaves are still fair game for any curious baby’s mouth.

In the last week, she has started toting sticks around the exhibit with her trunk, often hustling to keep up with Mom.

Family time

She still spends most of her time following Semba but shares the love with the rest of her herd.

When she and 12,000-pound Mabu took their first father-daughter mud wallow several days after her birth, he watched carefully for her underfoot.

When she tried to nurse from her “Auntie” Lungile, the unrelated elephant waited patiently while she explored.

And then there are her brothers.

Punga, her oldest brother, treats her with respect. Tygielski says it’s those seasoned, big-brother instincts kicking in. Sundzu, bumped from baby to middle child, is more of a rascal toward his sister as he adapts to sharing Mom.

“Sundzu, the first day that she was out with him, he looked at Mom and Aunt and nobody was watching, and he pushed his sister over,” Tygielski says. “It was so clear and thought out. He tried it a few days later, and Mom reprimanded him and smacked him with her trunk.”

But like any good, little sister, Nandi can dish it back out.

“She will hang on her brothers and run around them and grab their tails,” Tygielski says. She especially enjoys tugging on the hairs, or tassels, at the end of each tail. “She likes to play with Mom’s tail a lot. Mom has long tassels, so she will grab them like a little kid grabbing Mom’s skirt.”

Following Mom

On her first day of life, Semba had to rescue Nandi from a corner — she didn’t know how to back up — and though she now runs and romps, she isn’t beyond the occasional face plant and general silliness.

While most elephants put sand, sticks and hay on their backs to keep cool, Semba likes a little extra headcover — a style she is passing on to her daughter.

“It’s like a little traveling meal,” Tygielski says. “She puts hay on (the baby’s head) and then takes it back and eats it.”

Keepers reward Semba with treats for letting them touch the baby through a protective barrier for physical inspections. Nandi cooperates. Sometimes.

A mind — and toy — of her own

As her days increase, so does her confidence.

“She is now starting to flare her ears and hold her head up high and charge,” Tygielski says. “She’s starting to do that farther and farther away from Mom.”

But for a while, sticking close to Semba brings unexpected joys.

About three weeks ago, keepers gave Semba an adult elephant ball about the size of her daughter. Nandi had other ideas.

“So much of her environment, everything is new, so we haven’t felt the need to throw other things in…” Tygielski says. “The ball was for Mom, and she and Mom were together, and Mom was rolling it to get treats. Baby took the ball away and ran off with it.”

Each month, as Nandi bounds closer to her one-year birthday on Aug. 20, 2015, we will keep you in the know on what’s new with this precious pachyderm’s progress.

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

Age: Two months as of Monday.

Weight: A little more than 400 pounds. She gains three to four pounds every day and weighed 245 pounds at birth.

One of the herd: “She is playing more with her brothers and some of that is Mom letting them, because they are being gentle and good. They splash each other in the mud wallow, and she runs up to them and charges them and touches them with her trunk. They push her a little bit, and it’s gentle wrestling.”

What’s new: She still loves water and now uses her front teeth to dig in wet areas of sand. “Mom will put water from the stream on the ground, and she’ll play in it and make her own little puddle. She is becoming very skilled at taking small drinks of water with her trunk,” Tygielski says. Nandi is also learning to hoist herself over logs, front feet first, but sometimes still needs a push from Mom, “like a parent helping a kid on the playground.”

Read more about Nandi at tucson.com/elephant

Each month, as Nandi bounds closer to her 1-year birthday on Aug. 20,  we will keep you in the know on what’s new with this precious pachyderm’s progress.

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

Age: Three months today.

Weight: 465 pounds when we talked with Tygielski last week, but she guessed Nandi would gain about 10 more pounds by today.

First shot: Last Thursday, Nandi got her first shot — tetanus — and as seems to be the norm with this pretty pachyderm, she took it like a pro. “She was perfect,” Tygielski says. “She got it, and I was expecting her to cry out, and her mom to be upset, but she didn’t make a squeak.”

40,000 muscles: Nandi is still figuring out how to manage the 40,000 muscles in her trunk, which “flops all over the place,” Tygielski says. Nandi now uses her trunk to pick up and put in her mouth things such as hay, leaves and pellets — but not for eating. “She will pick up pellets off of our hands with her trunk, but won’t let us put them in her trunk. She can’t hold her trunk still yet. She is getting more skillful at grabbing things.”

Hanging with Auntie Lungile: “She spends more time with her aunt. She will trade off between Mom and Auntie, and I think Auntie really likes that. ... Nandi will follow her aunt and stay close to her like she would with a surrogate mom, like with a human aunt. Sometimes, they’ll dust together.” The practice of picking up dirt with her trunk without inhaling it and tossing it onto her back for sunscreen and fly protection is a new thing for Nandi. Tygielski calls it a sophisticated behavior.

Having a ball: “We have these Boomer Balls, and they have small holes that you can put pellets inside, and the adults roll them around to get the pellets out. She will climb with her front two feet on it.” Cute but sometimes clumsy, Nandi is not beyond the occasional tumble.

For more information on Nandi and to see her playing in a kiddie pool visit tucson.com/elephant

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

Age: Four months on Saturday.

Weight: 515 pounds last Thursday, but Tygielski suspected this big baby would gain about five pounds by today.

Getting in the groove: “Months three and four are really similar,” Tygielski says. Nandi spends more time these days playing with 3-year-old brother Sundzu and is still getting most of her nutrients from mom Semba’s milk. Her face is getting more round and less wrinkly, Tygielski says, but mom is still a security blanket. After getting her second tetanus shot, Nandi hid under Semba.

Playful palate: “The most exciting thing is she is eating big clumps of hay and is running to her trainers to take pellets out of their hands,” Tygielski says. “I do think she is eating and swallowing. They are not a substantial portion of dietary intake, but she recognizes that (a trainer) has something that might be fun,” she says. For Sundzu’s fourth birthday celebration on Dec. 27, the elephants will get their version of cake — frozen juice and water with apples and oranges inside.

In the past, when the herd has munched on ice pops, Nandi has just played with her treats. Tygielski hopes that come birthday weekend, she will actually eat some of the “cake.”

Copy cat: Nandi watches and follows, mimicking the other elephants even when she doesn’t exactly know why.

“She is starting to pick up branches,” Tygielski says. “Her mom and brothers steal them from her because she doesn’t know she is supposed to eat them.” Nandi has also taken to pushing logs around — with little to show for it. The older elephants roll the logs to expose bark to munch on. Still very much a baby, Nandi pushes at the logs, but they don’t budge.

“Little Miss Coordinated”: Her balance is improving, Tygielski says, giving Nandi that nickname. She likes climbing on the plastic balls where zoo staff hide pellets, and she no longer wipes out quite as much — though you might still see a tumble.

“She was running so fast to keep up with the other elephants, she tripped,” Tygielski says of a recent fall that tickled visitors. Instead of standing immediately, Nandi continued moving forward on her front knees, hobbling after the others.

Sharing the love: She’s cute — ask anyone. BuzzFeed ranked Nandi as No. 34 in its list “The 37 Cutest Baby Animal Photos of 2014,” and Good Morning America recently showed a short clip of mother and daughter during a segment on an “elephant mom” style of parenting.

Read more about Nandi at tucson.com/elephant

Each month, as Nandi bounds closer to her 1-year birthday on Aug. 20, we will keep you in the know on what’s new with this precious pachyderm’s progress.

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

Age: Five months on Tuesday, Jan. 20. The herd is planning something for Nandi’s 6-month birthday in February, Tygielski says.

Weight: About 600 pounds.

Nandi’s first Christmas: The herd woke on Christmas morning to an exhibit covered in enrichment items. “She had boxes wrapped with fruit inside, and she also had boxes that had beet pulp, which they like,” Tygielski says. But instead of eating the goodies, Nandi took the typical, kid approach. “She hadn’t had a lot of paper before that. It was her first experience ripping paper and waving it around like a giant flag. She had a lot of fun. She didn’t eat the contents like the other elephants. She just played with the box.”

Nandi’s keepers also gave her a large, plastic cube that momentarily frightened her. “She ran up to it and trumpeted and bumped into it with her head and stepped on it. She stood on it like, ‘I’m going to smash this,’” Tygielski says.

That white stuff: Unlike the rest of the city, Nandi took the weather in stride. The exhibit had more frost than snow on New Year’s Eve, Tygielski says. “They didn’t react to the fog ... For us, we call them, and they come across the exhibit, and they just appear. It was kind of spooky. You don’t hear their feet. They walk silently.”

Independence: Nandi no longer needs Mom around 24/7, Tygielski says. Instead, she spends more time with other members of the herd, hanging out with Dad even when Semba is across the exhibit. “She will stay in the barn and play while her mom goes out to exhibit. She wants to go into all the rooms in the barn, so it takes longer to get her out. It’s a pain in the butt, but it’s cute. She is becoming an explorer, more confident.”

Milking it: Ninety percent of Nandi’s nutrition still comes from nursing, but she now nurses for longer amounts of time but less frequently. Hay and pellets have also become more usual munchies for the baby elephant. “She doesn’t just play with them in her mouth,” Tygielski says. The keepers use pellets to reward the elephants for responding, so until Nandi sees them as a treat, she has no incentive to recognize her name.

Slip and slide: “In the mud I almost felt sorry for her,” Tygielski says. “It was raining a few days in a row … The older elephants know to walk slow when it’s slippery, but she was trying to run in it. She fell almost six times, flopped in the mud and kept going. She had to slow down to get to the barn. Mom didn’t help her. She looked at her like, ‘Figure it out, kid.’”

For more information on Nandi visit tucson.com/elephant

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

Age: Friday, Nandi hits a big one. Her 6-month birthday is Feb. 20. Festivities are in the works.

Weight: 655-ish pounds. About her chunkiness, Tygielski says, “I think what’s unique about her is that she came out as a bigger baby and has continued to gain weight and is very, very healthy in terms of her weight and growth chart.”

So about that name we all voted for: Maybe, just maybe, Nandi is starting to recognize her name. She now eats pellets more frequently and sticks by her keepers when doors open and close. “We are starting to use her name more and more to call her over,” Tygielski says in an email. “She is also becoming less shy if multiple trainers try to work with her on brushing her ears back.”

One person’s trash is Nandi’s treasure: “She is still obsessing with paper bags,” Tygielski says. “Today, I sent her out of the barn, and she grabbed a paper bag and shook it around and stomped on it and slung it with her trunk. It was a big, white one with the pellets. I was thinking, ‘Don’t take that on exhibit. It looks like trash.’ She is more fascinated with paper than with elephant toys. She only gets it in the barn, so maybe that makes it special. She will stop whatever she’s doing and go stomp on it and play around.”

Boys will be boys: Right now, Nandi is boring in the eyes of her brothers, Punga and Sundzu. They just want to roughhouse, and until Nandi gets older and can hold her own, there is no way Mom Semba is letting the boys push around her little princess. “They are just going on like big brothers do and not paying any attention to their sister,” Tygielski says. Instead, Nandi is spending more time with Aunt Lungile.

She’s growing up so fast: Nandi is starting to move like a grown-up — sometimes. “Elephants look like they are gliding as they move, and at times, she does,” Tygielski says. “But when she runs, she turns back into a floppy-footed youngster.” Nandi also ventures into the mud wallow solo, though Mom still won’t let her near the pool. Nursing still provides most of her nutrients, but like a good big girl, she’s trying grown-up food, stuffing hay in her mouth, the essence of maturity — until it all falls out. “She seems to be playing,” Tygielski says.

What Tygielski has loved about these last six months: Watching Nandi grow. “I think so many other animals take so long, and while she is very dependent on Mom for protection, she is getting so coordinated so quickly,” she says. “I delight in how much she recognizes people and seems excited to see us. That’s a little perk of this job.”

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: Seven months on Friday.

Weight: About 710 pounds. Remember when she weighed 245 pounds in August?

Party animal: For her 6-month birthday, Nandi got a taste of the good life. The zoo threw her two birthday parties, where she had a grand old time whacking “piñatas.” See a photo gallery at tucson.com/elephant

“She loves smashing boxes and then walking and rolling on top of them,” Tygielski says in an email.

A picky eater no more: Beyond nursing, Nandi is now munching on produce, hay and leaves.

New rules: “She is starting formal training,” Tygielski says. “The expectation is that she cannot bolt onto exhibit from the barn without her trainer and her mom. If she runs out ahead of us, we have to wait for her to come back into the barn and then she and her mom go out together. Getting her to stay with her trainer is the beginning of teaching her other behaviors, but the first is that she has to stay with her trainer until the trainer says it’s OK to go. Hard when you’re little and impatient.”

Taking a swim — or not: As the days warm up and other animals at the zoo get back to splashing, Nandi’s keepers want her to do some watery wandering. But mom Semba has other ideas. “Nandi wanted to explore the pool ledge with her brothers, but Semba repeatedly used her foot to back Nandi away from the pool,” Tygielski says. “We recently cleaned it and want to try and get her in it so we can feel confident that she can swim (before we fill it full) — but Mom won’t let her near it.” Tygielski says Nandi is a committed mud wallower, often diving in the dirt even when the other elephants have no interest.

“Her new favorite thing to do is throw herself on top of a little dirt or sand hill and slide down.”

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.

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.”

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: Nine months — can you believe it? — Wednesday, May 20.

Weight: As Tygielski puts it, Nandi is now a “chunker,” weighing in at about 820 pounds.

Alas, a baby no more: “I have to say, she is almost beyond the baby point,” Tygielski says. “She is starting to look like a kid.” Sniff. Sniff. And on a more, er, biological note: “Her poop is starting to look more like an adult’s,” Tygielski says, which is a result of eating more hay and leaves.

Real training: With maturity comes training — and an increasing attention span. “She stays with us and follows us for a whole session,” Tygielski says. For Nandi’s new move, trainers instruct her to put her trunk on top of her head. She also recognizes her name and individual trainers — behaving better for some than others. “Little stinker,” Tygielski adds.

Pampered pachyderm: Nandi has learned the joy of a massage. “She loves to have her legs brushed like a horse,” Tygielski says. “She will stand there and stand there, and we’ll be working with her mom, and it takes longer, and Nandi usually gets in the way. We can’t feed her the whole time, so now we will just brush her legs.”

Afraid of the deep end: Nandi’s first swim might have scared her off — she and mom Semba stay far away from the water while the other elephants splash. Instead she wallows in the mud. As it gets hotter, the keepers will encourage another dip.

Duck tales: “She is still climbing on balls a lot, but now she tries to stand on her hind legs and balance on them,” Tygielski says. “The other thing she just started doing is, like her brothers, she is chasing the ducks. Ducks will come (into the exhibit) and she has to chase them off. She will flair her ears and run after them with her head down. They fly away five feet and just stop and look at her like, ‘What are you doing?’ Once they are too far away from Mom, she’ll stop.”

Brotherly love: Nandi splits her time between her mom and brother Sundzu. “She slips and falls, and you have to believe that some of it is purposeful to get her brothers to play with her,” Tygielski says. “It’s sweet for Sundzu to have a buddy ... He will lay on his stomach so he is at her level and wrestle with his trunk.”

Queen of the hill: “For Mother’s Day, Semba got all kinds of giant boxes covered in colored paper with hay and produce inside,” Tygielski says. Nandi, paper lover that she is, ripped the paper off and took a lap. Though she is eating more tree leaves from boughs, she still enjoys parading with paper and branches. Tygielski adds, “Sometimes she’ll run to the top of a sand hill and wave it like she is waving a flag.”

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: Another month gone. Nandi hits 10 months on Saturday.

Weight: 880 pounds.

The wallow: Nandi is out to become a world-class wallower. Sometimes, the love for mud even trumps the love for Mom.

“Something that has been kind of interesting is some of the herd will go swimming, Mom will go off eating on her own, and Nandi will go to the mud wallow by herself, on her own for a long time,” Tygielski says. “She goes in and swamps around a lot and gets mud on one side and kicks and flips over and will stand in the wallow, kicking. She really likes to kick. We put more water in the wallow as it’s getting hotter, and she just likes to splash.

“It’s a giant baby pool with some mud.”

Still no pool?: As of last week, sadly no. “It’s a bit of a bummer,” Tygielski says. “We thought it would happen more, but there haven’t been that many 100-degree days.”

Maybe it’s time to bring on the heat.

“As summer heats up, we’re hoping she is going to start enjoying the pool more.” It’s a selfish hope, Tygielski admits, because if she’s that cute playing in the mud, just imagine this pachyderm paddling, snorkeling through the pool with her trunk aloft.

Tractor terrors: Don’t mess with this elephant. “We use a tractor to make sand piles and dirt piles for the elephants and to mix up the mud wallow,” Tygielski says. “She ran as close as she could get and trumpeted at the tractor, so that was pretty sweet.”

Quite puzzling: As Nandi’s diet matures, she continues to mimic the other elephants. “On the perimeter of the exhibit, along the rock wall, it has puzzle feeders in the wall, holes with hay and leaves and branches,” Tygielski says. “The elephants reach in for food and she is starting to do that... I don’t know how much she is getting, but she is picking up what they are pulling out.”

Her “person”: While Nandi hasn’t learned any new behaviors in training since last month, she has developed a sense of entitlement. “She is getting more spunky, wanting to climb and reach toward our faces, and we have to wait for her to settle down,” Tygielski says. “She will follow us. When she goes to train, someone takes her mom, and the second person works with her. When the second person is not available, she’s looking for her own person. She’s like, ‘Wait. Is there somebody for me?’ If you’re a moment late, she’s like, ‘There you are!’”

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: 11 months as of Monday, July 20. Next month, the little girl turns 1.

Weight: About 925 pounds. Tygielski anticipates Nandi hitting 1,000 pounds by her birthday, though she now gains weights in spurts, making it harder to predict.

Trunk target: Tygielski has been training Nandi in a behavior called “trunk target.” Here, an elephant holds its trunk steady to the trainer’s palm, allowing the keeper to safely check spots like the feet and mouth.

“You want to be able to maintain the trunk so you have a point of focus and know where the most dangerous part of the elephant is,” Tygielski says. So far, Nandi has learned the trunk-to-palm touch and is now mastering — much to her frustration — duration.

“She has to be still,” Tygielski says. “She can’t be kicking her legs, and she can’t be flapping her ears ... so a lot of times, she’ll just get three seconds where she is perfect, and then she just starts kicking with her leg, so that’s throwing a tantrum, and we can’t give her a treat. We have to start over again.”

The tantrum of all tantrums: ”The first few times we started with these new rules, she threw a little tantrum,” Tygielski says. “In fact, a colleague from San Diego was here and instructing us, and (Nandi) was not having a lot of fun, because she wasn’t having a lot of success, so she literally went and laid down and just rolled around kicking her legs and then came back to the trainer. It was like she was throwing a baby fit, a temper tantrum.”

The elephant paddle: Summer weather has finally lured Nandi and mom Semba into the pool. “What she typically does is climb onto her mom’s sides and has her two front feet on her mom’s side so she can swim around ... and hang on to Mom, and that way she can conserve energy.” Swimming wears Nandi out faster than running does, and she’ll use any available elephant as a raft when her stamina fizzles. “Sometimes she is just under, and you know she is down there, and sometimes her trunk will come up for air, and sometimes it doesn’t, and you know she’s fine. I don’t know what she is doing, but then she just kind of bounces up.” Unlike her Aunt Lungile, who looks elegant in the water, Nandi’s dog paddle isn’t quite there yet. “There’s not too much grace,” Tygielski says, laughing.

No Nandi pancakes: Not to be a fun-sucker, but Tygielski often worries when the six elephants party together. “We had one day where all six elephants were in the pool at once, which was amazing that they all fit, but they do,” Tygielski says. “Those are the days as a trainer that are a little scary, because when all of the elephants start having fun, they might forget where Nandi is and that she’s little and not to push her around.”

But that’s where the keepers have an ally in Semba, who often swoops in to save Nandi from an imminent squashing. “She has spent some time with Dad, on and off, which is so sweet, because side-by-side, she is so small and he is 12,000 pounds, and he continues to be really gentle with her.” When they wallow together, “We’re always like, ‘Oh gosh, please don’t smash her,’ but he knows. Somehow, they all know where she is and not to squish her.”

Every morning, Nandi races into the Reid Park Zoo’s elephant barn to greet the day — and sometimes she trumpets.

“We didn’t know what a baby trumpet would sound like,” says Sue Tygielski, the zoo’s elephant manager. “It’s a little bit like a squeaky sneeze.”

It has been a year of discovery as Nandi’s eight keepers have cared for the first elephant born in Arizona.

First steps. First mud wallow. First swim.

First birthday.

On Aug. 20, 2014, Tucson celebrated its 239th birthday.

Then at 10:55 p.m., this pachyderm princess stole the show.

Elephants lined up to watch Semba give birth in an adjacent paddock. And when the baby wobbled their way, they greeted her, trunks reaching through metal railings to caress the newborn, who later weighed in at 245 pounds.

“All you could see in the light was the trunks coming through...” says elephant keeper Mara Jameson. “They were very curious about her and getting to know who she was.”

As was the rest of Tucson.

The zoo set an attendance record in 2014 with more than 617,000 visitors. The previous record of 606,884 visitors was set in 2012 when the elephants’ Expedition Tanzania opened along with two other small exhibits, said zoo education curator Vivian VanPeenen.

Nandi has also attracted out-of-state visitors.

“It just shocks us that they would come all the way to Tucson to see our baby, and then you realize how lucky you are, because these people traveled to see her,” Tygielski says.

They come because Nandi lives up to her siSwati name, which means “sweet” or “fun” in the Zulu language. Star readers, who voted for the name in September 2014, nailed it.

She’s spunky, playful and a pro mud-wallower. As of last week, Tucson’s big baby weighed 970 pounds.

In the coming year, Nandi will mature and act more like a “bigger toddler and a bigger kid,” Tygielski says. Maturity means Nandi will receive more training that allows her keepers to better care for her. For example, she is getting closer to showing the staff the back of her ears and bottom of her feet.

She has better patience these days — no more toddler tantrums.

“There are very few people in the world that get to take care of a young elephant, especially one that’s in its family unit and behaving like an elephant,” Tygielski says.

And when it comes to Nandi, “behaving like an elephant” is pretty dang cute.

Here are seven times Nandi made us go “Awwww:”

1. Meeting the family. “She met (the elephants) somewhat individually, and each one would come to her and smell her with their trunk and touch her really gently,” Tygielski says. “Mabu (her dad) is so huge compared to her, but they all stroked her and touched her, and at one point, he kept tugging her ear to pull her up. ... She would reach up to his head with her trunk ... and his trunk looks like a tree trunk, and hers looks like a little piece of spaghetti.”

2. Blowing water. “She has learned how to blow water out of her trunk,” Tygielski says. “She will suck up water and make her own little pool. She will make her own little mud wallow special for her.”

3. Braving thunder: ”She loves the monsoons because it will puddle up,” Tygielski says. “If there is scary thunder they can huddle together ... Nandi is the only one, when there is thunder, to run around, and when she sees that no one else is reacting, she sees that it’s not a big deal.”

4. Playing dress up: ”Mom puts hay and sticks on her back, and Nandi will take a bunch of hay and throw it on her head,” Tygielski says. Some days we have been coming to the barn, and we can’t see her face because she has a wig of hay.”

5. Slipping and sliding: ”Her mud wallow adventures — we were worried about her in the wallow, but she was so confident and not at all fearful,” Tygielski says. “She would trip around and fall and slip around, just getting her toddler coordination.”

6. Charging the ducks: “We have had batches of ducklings, and she is making it her personal mission to protect the herd from the ducks,” Tygielski says. “She runs up to them and stands there and is getting confident. The ducks don’t react at all. They’re so used to the animals, they don’t think she is going to do anything.”

7. Cuddling with Sundzu: “Now some of her sweetest moments are with Sundzu,” Tygielski says of Nandi’s brother. “He will often lie down on his stomach, so he is closer to her height and lets her climb on him. Punga has been doing it a little, but he also plays rough with her in the pool, but Mom comes over and splits things up and puts him on one side of the pool.”