Earlier plans to rid the city of begging elephants have failed because of the cost, the lack of available forest area and the pressure of poverty, which drives elephant handlers to seek a living on the streets.

Upon their arrival, Paige finds Myra is unhappy with her arranged marriage to the brooding and sinister Kah and is secretly in love with a young elephant handler named Alu.

His infatuation is immediate and total; he leaves his partner in crime with the car, signs on as an elephant handler and leaves town that night.

Before he handed in his first western - "Hondo," in 1953 - he had been a longshoreman, a lumberjack, an elephant handler, a fruit picker and an officer on a tank destroyer in World War II.

And so the call had gone out for an elephant handler and a vet, and Howard had found both in the person of Susan Morgan.

Ancient Romans and Asian mahouts, or elephant handlers, have noted elephants' ability to distinguish melodies, and today's circus elephants follow musical cues.

Only the elephant handlers came to the ramparts.

Pua became upset on a mission in which the cast had to entice elephants to paint on canvases using paintbrushes held by their tusks, when one of the elephant handlers used violent discipline on her elephant to motivate it to paint.

Since leaving his native Jamestown, North Dakota, at the age of fifteen, he's been a longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker, flume builder, fruit picker, and an officer on tank destroyers during World War II.

Civil war in Cambodia and the elephant's decreasing economic importance has forced the elephant handlers (mahouts) to turn to entertainment to make a living.