Berlin elephants feast on tasty Christmas trees

BERLIN (AP) — Ele­phants at the Berlin Zoo finally got a chance to tuck into their Christ­mas din­ner: A feast of donated pine trees. The zoo treated its ele­phants and some of its other ani­mals to the trees for lunch Fri­day. Before gob­bling the green­ery, ele­phants young and old played with the trees, whose strong smell attracts them.

Ele­phant keeper Rag­nar Kuehne said the unsold Christ­mas trees were donated by local ven­dors. He said “the ani­mals love it. For them, the Christ­mas feast is start­ing now.” Kuehne says the zoo doesn’t accept trees from the pub­lic, which could con­tain chem­i­cals or left­over dec­o­ra­tions. He also says Christ­mas trees inside houses aren’t as fresh and juicy as those at cold out­door mar­kets — which is just how the ele­phants like them.

Posted by AP News on Jan 4 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.