Wildlife Center in Thailand
Elephants
The Baby Elephants
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Jan 2009
Let me introduce the Elephants at the Wildlife Rescue Center. There are
four adult females and two babies. They all arrived at the Center
already named. The oldest at 60 is Pailin, which means gemstone in Thai.
Kiewta (glass eye) acquired her name because she is blind in one eye.
Both Kiewta and Somboon (perfect) are 40. Somboon has an infection that
is being treated but she doesn’t like it. Namphon (rainwater) is 30 and
must be kept separate because she fights for dominance with Kiewta. The
babies are Soy Tong (gold necklace), a sweet four year old female and
Khan Kluah, a 2 1/2 year old trouble maker who came to the center last
October.
Somboon was a street elephant who got too old and
carried too many tourists. She got hit by a car and has a bum leg as a
result. Khan Kluah fell into a drainage ditch and they couldn’t get him
out so the Center was called and he moved in as the latest resident. The
others were persuaded to come to live at the Center with their Mahoots.
All the elephants show evidence of “Pajun”, the process by which the
elephants are domesticated. It is unspeakably cruel. The elephant is
chained and a sling is placed around its neck to prevent it from moving.
It is deprived of food and water and is beaten and sometimes even
knifed. After 3 to 5 days it is fed and given water and the process is
repeated until the elephant looses its spirit and submits. This is bad
for elephants bred in captivity but it is even worse for those taken
illegally from the wild.
At 6:30 AM the sun has not yet risen but
it is time for the volunteers to walk with the Mahouts to retrieve the
elephants from where ever they spent the night. The baby elephants stay
at the center overnight but the adults are in the forest. The elephants
greet each other if they have not been together during the night and
greet the volunteers they know. The group ambles back to the center
where they will be given their first meal of the day. At the end of the
day the process is reversed and the volunteers and mahouts take the
elephants to their night resting spot in the forest. This is changed
daily so that no one area of the forest gets destroyed by the elephants
eating all the leaves and uprooting trees.
Elephants return for the night
eating pineapple leaves
The day that we spent
observing the elephants, piles of pineapple leaves were on the menu. I
was interested to see how particular the elephants are about their food.
Kiewta took a clump of pineapple leaves still attached to the root, put
the roots under her foot and detached the tastier leaves which she
promptly munched. Other days the elephants get the trunks of banana
plants or sugar cane. They may also get fruits such as pineapples or
bananas. If Jackfruit is available, they crush the whole huge fruit
under their feet to get at the sweet innards.
All the elephants
have several meals during the day, so that is a great part of the
volunteers’ duties. Another important job is cleaning up the mounds of
elephant poo and consolidating the elephant compost piles. It is not all
walking around with the elephants.
A few times a week the
volunteers drive out in a truck to harvest food for the elephants.
Pineapple picking is the hardest. The plants must be cut off with a
sharp knife close to the ground. You have to have good heavy work gloves
and wear long shirts and pants to protect yourself from the sharp
leaves. A hat and sunscreen are also recommended as the sun is hot in
the open field. Banana plant and sugar cane cutting is a bit easier.
Gathering pineapple stalks
Riding the elephant during its bath
The fun activity of the day is bath time. The adults get bathed
about 2 PM in a dammed up section of the lake that faces the Center. The
elephants all love their bath time and may even go in themselves to cool
off during the day. At the formal bath time, the volunteers either wade
into the water or at times, ride on top of the elephant to get close
enough to scrub them down. All the volunteers have videos of themselves
falling off into the muddy water as the elephants play around at their
bath time.
The baby elephants are bathed about 4 PM every day.
They just play around like puppies in the water until one or the other
has had enough. I took a new volunteer down to see the babies bathe one
day. The babies soon came out of the water to see who the new people
were. They circled around where we were watching and then returned to
their play time in the water. We stayed out of their way for even a
small baby is stronger than we are.
Sandy, a volunteer from the
US, has been working with the elephants for the last three weeks. She
said she thought two weeks was probably an ideal time period. She
switches this week to work with the other animals for another month.
After getting to know the elephants and their individual personalities,
she said she is going to miss interacting with them.
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