Zoo officials say the logs will promote exercise and encourage natural behaviors among Portland's Asian elephant family.

Elephants at the Oregon Zoo got some new toys this week, thanks to a makeover for the World Forestry Center’s outdoor locomotive exhibit.

Early Tuesday, Nov. 15, a crew from Stimson Lumber Co. lifted five 30-foot-long Douglas-fir logs from the forestry center’s Peggy the Train display, and shipped the logs a few hundred fee downhill to the zoo’s new Elephant Lands habitat. The logs will be the elephants’ new playthings and exercise equipment.

Zoo officials say the logs will promote exercise and encourage natural behaviors among Portland’s Asian elephant family. “They’ll give the elephants new surfaces to scratch on, push against and climb over,” said Shawn Finnell, the zoo’s senior elephant keeper. “Lily especially is an active climber, and I expect her to be all over them.”

The World Forestry Center is updating and renovating several of its outdoor areas and needed to replace the logs, which had been on display for 15 years. New logs will be added to the display of the 1909 Lima Shay-geared, 42-ton locomotive that hauled an estimated billion feet of logs in its lifetime.

Peggy worked in the forests of Washington and Oregon, survived the Tillamook Burn and retired in 1950. In the early 1970s, after a life on temporary display or in storage, Peggy was moved to a permanent display outside the forestry center, off Southwest Canyon Road near the zoo.

“The World Forestry Center staff is thrilled to see our big logs go to a happy home,” said Eric Vines, the forestry center’s executive director.