Artistic Elephant Dies During Surgery

Ruby, an elephant celebrated at the Phoenix Zoo for her paintings, had to be put to death during a risky surgery to remove a dead, 200-pound fetus. Veterinarians found that Ruby’s uterine wall had ruptured during pregnancy and caused a deadly infection. Joe Foerner, a Chicago veterinarian who led the operation, likened the infection to “a ruptured appendix, only a thousand times.” The full-term fetus had slipped out of the womb and into Ruby’s abdomen, said Dr. Kathy Orr, the zoo’s chief veterinarian. Ruby became a media star a decade ago when her keepers noticed she liked to hold a stick in her trunk and doodle in the sand.