Luke, an Asian elephant, poses for a photo with visitors at Two Tails Ranch in Williston. Patricia Zerbini, behind Luke in red, has been around exotic animals her entire life, and now runs Two Tails Ranch.
Cost: Adults $10 and $5 for kids 9 and under; Group discounts available
Contact: (352) 528-6585 or www.twotailsranch.com
Patricia Zerbini was never going to live a tame life.
She grew up with a father named Tarzan, a trapeze artist mother and a backyard full of circus animals. By age 9, she was working with the lions and tigers in her father’s animal show. Then in 1979, five elephants joined the family’s exotic clan. Zerbini was always scared of elephants. As a small child, she witnessed someone get “smashed” by the large animal.
One night the elephants’ trainer left in the middle of the night and never returned. The next morning, Tarzan Zerbini approached his 14-year-old daughter.
“My dad came up to me and said ‘You’re going to be taking care of the elephants now,’” Zerbini recalls 32 years later. “When that opportunity came up I just said okay and walked in and did it.”
And she never stopped.
Zerbini, 46, has spent more than 25 years of her life living with and caring for elephants at the Two Tails Ranch. Located on 10 acres in Williston, the ranch has been a training, medical, breeding and retirement facility for elephants and other exotic animals. More than 200 elephants have passed through the gates of the ranch, which she and her late husband, nationally-known elephant trainer Theodore Svertesky, started in 1984.
Lions, tigers, zebras, tortoises, birds, camels and bears have all had a home at the ranch, but for Zerbini, it’s the elephants that speak to her heart.
“I can just read them like a book. I don’t have to think about it,” she says, as a spark fills her stunning blue eyes. “I know what they’re thinking, and I know their actions and reactions. I can read animals very well, but I can read them more than any other animal.”Right now, her elephant family includes Bunny, Roxie and Luke. Bunny, in her mid-30s, is one of the five elephants Zerbini started working with at 14. Roxie is in her mid-50s and she got Luke when he was two-and-a-half years old. He’s 26, weighs just under 12,000 pounds and is known for his painting skills.
Zerbini starts each day at 7:30 a.m. She cleans up after the elephants and gives them food, water and baths twice a day. Just like a mother with her children, Zerbini loves, protects and provides for them like second nature. It’s an all-consuming role that has its challenges, but she “wouldn’t change it for anything.”
“When you work with an elephant, you actually become the matriarch,” says the mother of four sons, ages 27, 25, 10 and 8. “You’re the one who supplies the protection, food and the guidance. You’re also the one who sets all the rules, limits on boundaries … so when something goes wrong, they look to me.”
Zerbini was born in Canton, Ohio, surrounded by horses, lions and tigers. She comes from nine generations of animal handlers including her grandfather, who worked with chimpanzees, and her famous big cat tamer and circus performer father Jean Zerbini, who legally changed his name to Tarzan. He and her mother, Jacqueline Zerbini, performed with circuses, fairs and presented animals shows in Europe and all over the United States. When she was 6, her parents, both of French descent, sent her and her sister Sylvania to Paris to live with their grandmother. She stayed there for three years. When she returned to America, the family later moved to Sarasota.Patricia Zerbini’s elephant adventures have taken her all across North America, Africa and Europe. She’s done circus performances, educational presentations and shown elephants at fairs, festivals, fundraisers and animal parks. She’s also lent her skills to film and TV, including commercials, “Quest for Fire,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “Circus of the Stars” and “Good Morning, America.”
She says the way she works with elephants is probably why she’s so regarded as a leading elephant expert.
“I work by voice. I work harmoniously with them,” she says, adding she enjoys her consulting work the most. “It’s not that the elephants come in and do their routine. It’s more of a presentation of the animal more so than anything.”
Elephant sanctuary
In 1986, Patricia Zerbini moved to Two Tails Ranch. Two years before, Svertesky had bought 10 acres of watermelon fields in the Levy County town to create a place to board elephants and eventually start a breeding program. For many years, the facility was primarily used to keep Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey elephants that weren’t performing or on tour. The most elephants ever on the property at once was 62, mostly due to the addition of elephants sent up following Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
“They were here for about a three-week span. It was wall-to-wall elephants here,” she says, shaking her head.
In 1992, the couple found success with the breeding program when an elephant was born at the ranch. A year later, a second one was born. When the elephants turned 1, Ringling wanted to show them off on tour.
The couple accompanied them, but the decision would turn tragic.
On Jan. 13, 1994, on the first trip with the elephants, Svertesky and their two young sons boarded a train in Tampa heading to Orlando. Patricia Zerbini was driving their motor home. In Lakeland, the train derailed. Svertesky and a female clown performer were killed. The children were not seriously injured.
“I did stay the first year with the babies and made sure they were settled in and everything,” she says. “Needless to say, I couldn’t stay here so I [and her sons] went with my dad for a year and a half, and then I went to Europe and did consulting over there for 5 years, and then I started to miss my country.”
In 2000, the family returned to Williston and the ranch.
During her absence, Ringling had opened their own boarding and breeding facility, but retired Ringling elephants were still sent to the ranch up until last December.
In 2009, Patricia Zerbini, who now owns a total of 73 acres, opened Two Tails Ranch to the public and began offering tours. Today, she sees the ranch “as an educational venue for elephant lovers as well as professionals and a care facility for elephants in need.” She’s trying to acquire permits now to import elephants to restart the breeding program. She has her eye on four young females and two males that are a part of a herd in Africa set to be killed as part of culling, or removing animals from the population.
“As soon as the culling goes through this year, that’ll bring the entire population so low that they will then end up on the endangered species list,” she says.
In addition to the elephants, she has her hands full with other animals such as a pair of zebras, Honkers the goose and a parrot so loud he was banned from Sarasota County.
Patricia Zerbini says she can’t picture her life without the animals. She doesn’t think of them as pets but species co-existing. To her and her kids, this is home.
“Some people have a dog in their backyard, and we have all of this,” she says. “If you were raised around it, it’s not weird. ... I consider them a part of my family.”
Courtesy of John Goodall
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