Janice Roberti* age 12, of Fairfield , Conn.,

How much a day does an elephant eat?

Jumbo is a friendly creature and very devoted to a kind human master. However, there are disadvantages to having him as a. pet. He likes to have

a mud bath at least two or three times a week and he is far too big to do this in the average bath room. As a matter of fact, he is far too big to be comfortable in the average living room. Even if you had a convenient stream in the garden and rigged up a. suitable shelter, Jumbo would be too expensive for the average family to feed.

The big fellow is, of course, a vegetarian. He will eat grass and all sorts of vegetables growing on the ground. He uses his trunk to pick them up and stuff them into his mouth. He also likes tender twigs from the tops of certain trees. To get at these delicacies, he often uses his head as

a battering ram to knock down the whole tree. He needs about a quarter ton of green stuff every day. In captivity he is often fed on hay of which he eats 150 pounds a day and every day he needs 50 gallons of drinking water.