Why would a teenager from Montana, a state so rich in wildlife, travel to Pittsburgh to spend a week at The Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium?

"There's only one zoo in Montana and it's in Billings and it has like four animals,'' Leann Colella, 13, says.

OK, maybe she exaggerates. But if you want a place that bucks all the demographic data about the dearth of young people in Pittsburgh, it's Zoo Camp. It began 20 years ago with 253 campers 13 years old and under, and now gets that many campers in a single week. Enrollment this year should top 2,000.

Leann has been among them since the summer she was 4 years old and living in Apollo, 25 miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Armstrong County. Her brother Cody, three years older, had been a camper and she is the kind of kid who's up for anything.

In those preschool days, just touching a chinchilla was a big deal. Now Leann can get within a few yards of a gorilla and make a photographic record of the family life of elephants. It's the highlight of her summer each year, and her father Gary's decision to take a job in Helena, Mont., and move the family to Big Sky Country five years ago hasn't stopped her from coming back. Plenty of aunts, uncles and cousins still live around here.

Leann has been coming to the camp so long that she knows the animals better than she does her fellow campers. The day we met, she told me the gorilla Ubu had tried to hit a group of kids with a clump of grass but couldn't clear the moat.

The gorillas and elephants are her favorites. She loves the massiveness of the pachyderms, loves that they stick together as families, loves that they laugh. She says that's not just propaganda from "Dumbo.'' Elephants laugh.

"But they don't fly,'' Mark Reardon, assistant curator of conservation education, wanted to be sure I knew.

Given what elephants can leave behind, let us hit our knees in thanks for their staying grounded. But let us not leave them yet because many of these campers have grown up with the elephants Victoria and Callee, born in 1999 and 2000.

Katie Vecchi of Natrona Heights, who turns 21 today, has taught Leann for three years and was a zoo camper before she became a zoo worker. She said Callee has behaved like a bull elephant from the moment he was born, and almost shoved her over when they were both much younger. That was the same day Ms. Vecchi told herself, "I'm going to work with elephants the rest of my life.''

She went from Zoo Camp to the zoo's KidScience and Zoo Teens programs, and has been working on-and-off at the zoo for nearly seven years. She has never wavered in her desire to work with elephants, and is studying biology and environmental science as a rising junior at St. Leo University north of Tampa, Fla.

These one-week camps for children ages 2 to 13 continue through the week beginning Aug. 18. Some weeks for some age groups are closed, and others are on hold for low enrollment. The cost for zoo members is $115 per week for the half-day sessions and $195 for full-day sessions. Costs for non-members are $135 and $240.

(For information, call 412-365-2528 or go to www.pittsburghzoo.org and click "Education'' and then "Summer Programs.'')

By the way, Leann does not hold the record for longest trip to Zoo Camp. Two summers ago, another girl came back with her family from Japan.