Suzie Q had run-in with law

Hunt still on to find missing pachyderm

MOUNT PLEASANT — Leslie Mazyck had just arrived for his overnight shift at the Charleston County Police Department when he got a call about an elephant at a service station.

"The first thing I thought is that the man must be having hallucinations," Mazyck said.

By the time he arrived, the elephant had taken off down Mathis Ferry Road. Back in the woods, in an area known as Lovers' Lane, Mazyck found Suzie Q crunching on a corn crop.

He called for help. Three officers arrived and the elephant was rounded up fairly quickly. "One said, 'I dare you to get on the elephant's head.' " Mazyck, who is retired and lives on James Island, did just that with help from his fellow patrolmen. A police photographer was sent to document the occasion.

Suzie Q has become something of a cause celebre East of the Cooper.

The town Historical Commission is planning a marker to tell her story. The trouble is the marker text can't be finished until the commission knows where Suzie Q went.

In 1954, Channel 2 owner Drayton Hastie bought the Indian elephant for $2,700 from a New York importer of exotic animals. It was a publicity stunt to lure viewers from WCSC-TV. Unanswered is where Suzie Q was sent in 1963.

Robert Weitzel of Summerville, a retired mechanical engineering teacher, recalled that she was loaded up in a trailer to be shipped to Florida. By this time, she was full-grown. About halfway between Charleston and Savannah, Suzie Q kicked out the side of her trailer and got loose on U.S. Highway 17, then the main road to Florida, Weitzel said.

"She didn't want to leave Channel 2. She didn't want to go anywhere," Weitzel said.

The Highway Patrol and wildlife

officers rounded her up. Her trainer was sent from Charleston to ride with her in a new trailer, he said.

Town Planner Mike Robertson, who is researching Suzie Q, received a flood of calls from tipsters in response to a story in May 9 editions of The Post and Courier about where Suzie Q went after living at Channel 2.

"We've received tips for Cincinnati, Kentucky, Jacksonville and the west coast of Florida. The Florida sightings appear most promising," he said. There's also a Baltimore rumor that ends with her being injured or killed in an accident, he said.

According to the WCBD-TV Web site, some Citadel cadets kidnapped Suzie Q in the fall of 1958 to get the student body fired up for a game with Virginia Military Institute. She was loaded on her trailer, which was hooked to a 1950 Ford, and driven across the John P. Grace bridge, then a narrow two-lane blacktop.

Suzie Q sometimes visited neighbors on Coleman Boulevard. "Occasionally, she would escape and come trumpeting across the highway into Bay View Acres," according to "Mount Pleasant: The Friendly Town," released by Arcadia Publishing in 2001.

"Once when a sudden storm frightened her, she pulled up the oak tree she was tied to," the book says.

She lived on the station front lawn until she was shipped out after nine years at WUSN-TV, the predecessor of WCBD-TV.

Reach Prentiss Findlay at pfindlay@postandcourier.com or 937-5711.