Over the next week, the Star will revisit some of your favourite recent stories to find out what happened after the newspaper went to press. Today, the elephants that moved away from the Toronto Zoo after a protracted battle over their fate.

It’s dry season in San Andreas, where California’s ongoing drought and prolonged excessively hot weather make a fire hose at the Performing Animal Welfare Society Wildlife Sanctuary a welcome escape for three African elephants as familiar with frigid winters as drawn-out summers.

Iringa buries her head in the ground and kicks her foot up in the air as she bathes in the steady stream. Toka wiggles down in the mud, throwing dirt with her trunk, basking in the oozing slime.

This is probably the first year the ground these two elephants call home hasn’t frozen, said sanctuary co-founder Ed Stewart. Iringa and Toka, along with a third elephant, Thika, moved from the Toronto Zoo to their warm, sprawling habitat last fall

The three ladies captured the hearts of Torontonians as zoo staff, sanctuary employees, city council and even former The Price is Right host Bob Barker debated their transfer from Toronto to California for more than two years.

Despite protests from zoo staff, the elephants’ relocation was finally pushed through in late 2012, when city council reaffirmed its decision to move the mammals to the sanctuary, which takes in retired zoo and circus elephants. Barker funded the October 2013 transport.

In the nine months since their hotly-contested move, Iringa, 45, Toka, 44, and Thika, 33, have started acting like elephants in the wild rather than captive creatures, Stewart said.

“Natural behaviour is exhibited a lot, like every single day,” Stewart said. “Every day they resemble elephants in Africa.”

The opportunity to behave like untamed animals is foreign to the three aging mammals, who called a small paddock at the Toronto Zoo home for decades. Iringa and Toka were among the first elephants to arrive at the zoo in 1974; Thika was born into confinement. Their departure last fall was the end of the zoo’s 40-year elephant program.

Now, the ladies spend their days in a 32-hectare habitat that resembles their African homeland, with mud holes, trees and 60-metre hills.

Climbing the hills is a favourite pastime for Thika, the youngest and tallest of the three elephants, who had only ever known life in a zoo before moving to the sanctuary.

“Thika is the one that moves the most. She’s up and down the hills all over the habitat. The steepest hills up to the far reaches of the enclosures, and down in the trees. Sometimes we have to go find her; we don’t even know where she wound up,” Stewart said.

Thika had an adversarial relationship with Iringa when the elephants arrived at the sanctuary. To this day, she and Toka stay as far away from each other as possible.

Such behaviour is not unusual for elephants after they’ve spent so long together in such a cramped space.

“There’s no state-of-the-art way to keep elephants captive,” Stewart said.

Staff members at the sanctuary strive to keep the elephants feeling secure, said Stewart. Toka, for example, is now comfortable enough in her habitat to lie down and take a rest.

All three are very good eaters, especially when the grass is green enough to graze constantly.

“Even now, you can see them, they eat branches off of the trees, they eat grass, they eat dry grass and leaves. They really make use of the big habitat that they’re in,” Stewart said.

The ladies are comfortable with staff members and familiar with medical procedures such as blood work and urine samples.

The average age of a captive elephant is 37 or 38 years old, so all three elephants are older, considering their upbringing, Stewart said.

Iringa, the grandmother figure in the trio, is the elephant staff members concentrate on most. She has some medical issues, including arthritis, and has a hard time getting up if she lies down. She’s monitored all day as well as through the night.

She, Toka and Thika remain separate from the other eight elephants who reside at the sanctuary. They’re near enough that they can touch each other, smell each other, and put their trunks in each other’s mouths, but after some major social issues at the Toronto Zoo, Stewart said he is not rushing to open the gates.

“It’s just something that we’re really aware of and, as far as elephants associating with other elephants, they have the opportunity 24 hours a day to be next to another elephant.”

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Still, Stewart said, all three elephants seem to be a little calmer since moving to the Golden State.

“Every day we have them here is a great day for us, and I think a great day for them.”