JULY/AUG 2005

Elaine Irvin finds ‘Animals Everywhere’

By Stacey Dresner

She has played with elephants in Africa and held an alligator in Jamaica. She learned about green monkeys in St. Kitts and has tracked wild dogs in the Dominican Republic.

She is Elaine Irvin, animal lover and creator and host of "Animals Everywhere," a weekly television show that features a variety of animals, their caretakers and other animal experts.

Airing for the past two years on WFSB in Hartford and Cox Three, a local origination cable education channel that runs throughout New England, "Animals Everywhere" was recently picked up by the Outdoor Channel and will soon be seen three times a week. Irvin said that she hopes the show will be on Animal Planet by the end of the year.

"Animals Everywhere" is lighthearted and fun, with the hands-on Irvin interacting with the animals she films. She admits she is not an animal expert, but, like her viewers, just loves animals and in her shows, eagerly learns from the people who are the experts.

Tall and pretty, Irvin looks more like a fashion model than an animal show host.

"My friends laugh at me because I love wearing little skirts and little shoes and getting my nails and hair done and all of that good stuff, but when I am working, like on my elephant show, I am right there in the dung," she laughed.

Irvin, who lives in South Glastonbury with her husband, Edwin Chandler, was born and raised in Scotland, but lived in several countries as a child because her father was in the U.S. military. Her family eventually was stationed in Connecticut where she has lived for the past 20 years.

She says she always loved animals, even as a child.

"Ever since I was a kid I’ve been bringing animals home. You name it – birds, dogs, cats. I rescued a baby squirrel. Our house was never necessarily full of animals a lot, but there was a point when I was a child when we kind of went overboard. We had cats that we had rescued and all of a sudden they had kittens and then they had kittens," Irvin recalled with a laugh. "I drove my mother nuts, but she has always had a passion for animals too."

In college, Irvin ended up studying film and communications. After graduating from college, she began working for Donner Photographic, a videography company. She also worked on "The Gayle King Show," and since 1998 has been a photojournalist at WFSB.

A few years ago Irvin put two of her loves together – animals and film – and began producing her own Manchester cable access program called "A Pound of Hope," in which she showcased animals from local pounds and shelters in an effort to find them good homes.

Soon, Irvin began to feature other animals around Connecticut on her show, like the horses of the Hartford Police Mounted Unit and seals at the Maritime Center in Norwalk.

A few years ago, Irvin read an article about a program at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas where orangutans were being taught to communicate through the use of touch-screen monitors and lexigrams – pictures of words and items that the orangutans had learned.

"We went down and did that piece and it went from there,” Irvin said. “We decided these stories were fun and entertaining and that people liked them."

She realized that her little show had the potential to become something bigger. It just needed a new title that focused on the variety of animals she wanted to capture on film. She decided that the perfect title was "Animals Everywhere."

And her goal is to go everywhere to find animals for her stories.

She and her crew, including her husband, who she calls "Cameraman Ed," have been to South Africa, Jamaica, and St. Kitts, as well as locations within the U.S. to film their amazing animals.

In Jamaica, they did an alligator and crocodile show. She bravely held a crocodile which snapped a little too closely at her and scratched her.

They filmed elephants at the Kruger National Park in Botswana.

"They are very large creatures, and sometimes I jump right into things because I need to touch everything," Irvin said. "One of the elephants, ‘Marula’ kept charging me. She was just playing though. She would bring me a stick, just like a dog. But she would swipe you and she knocked me off my feet."

One of her more memorable shows was one filmed in the Dominican Republic in which she shed light on the large number of wild dogs that inhabit the island. She interviewed veterinarians who travel the island to spay and neuter as many of the dogs they can to help control the dog population.

One day while filming, she saw a tiny puppy being kicked by a man in the street. She scooped it up and had a confrontation with the man abusing it.

She decided to bring the puppy home to the U.S. and named her "Samana" after the village from which she was rescued. Samana joined Chalcedonly, the pit bull that Irvin rescued five years ago in Hartford.

Irvin said that upcoming shows will feature manatees and flamingos in Florida, two-toed sloths in Costa Rica, wallabies and koala bears in Australia and Tasmanian devils in New Zealand.

Above all, she said, she wants her viewers to have fun, while teaching them about animals – even the serious side of the animal world.

"Our shows are light-hearted. I don’t want to portray the sad side. I want to show people the Dominican Republic. It is fun, it is an island and tropical, but these dogs have problems," she said. "But I try to go about it the fun way. A lot of music, a lot of fun. Show a lot of good things that are there and the good things that the animals have, but also make the public aware that some of these animals are still needy."

"The animals need us in many ways," she explained. "It is our job to watch what we are doing with nature and with animals."