Elephants, bananas and mud!
I am finally sitting down for five minutes to collect my thoughts and write some posts. Its been a bit of a whistle stop and hectic trip so far but all very good.
This week I was able to tick something of my bucket list when I went to meet four wonderful, graceful and beautiful elephants Anna, Natalie, Mali and Peanut. What a total joy and honour, I really can’t express how amazing an experience it was. We first of all had a little talk about do’s and don’ts when it comes to elephants because their eye sight is not great, they can only see black white and green and large objects, so as a human they don’t always see you. They are so very gentle (except for baby Peanut!) and would not mean to hurt us in any way but could accidentally do some damage if you are not aware. First off we fed them bananas which are clearly their favourite thing in all the world watching the speed with which they consumed them. I did try to recommend chewing a few times before swallowing but obviously they weren’t listening!
Next we fed them sugar cane which does in fact require chewing so that was not as frantic as the bananas then they had some tall grasses. Once everything had gone they went for a wander in the river and a play with little peanut charging around totally unaware of her size and weight, so it was an imperative to keep one eye on which way she was charging incase you were in her path. She has also been known to try and sit on your knee!
Then it was time for a roll in the mud! Apparently elephants have quite itchy skin so the cool mud helps to sooth them and lessen the itching. It was absolutely fantastic to be in the mud along side them and massage the mud as they lay enjoying the attention. It is important to say these elephants are rescued from either a life of performance for tourists or just general bad treatment by their owner. The Thai government have now introduced a law which means elephants can be taken away from people who don’t treat them well and then somewhere like the BMP Elephant Care Project that I visited will rehabilitate them and nurture them back to full health. Unfortunately these elephants have been out of the wild for so long they have become domestic animals and would not be able to look after themselves in there natural habitat. So these care homes for elephants really serve an invaluable purpose. The elephants are not tied up or penned in at all they could leave if they wanted to but they don’t. To be honest if I was getting fed well, left to play with my friends and massaged on a regular basis I wouldn’t want to leave either!
After a good soak in the mud it was time for a bath. Again we joined them (now covered in mud ourselves) and helped to scrub their skin to get all the mud off and again give them a good scratch. It seemed to me very clear that these creatures were very happy I recon they looked like they were smiling if you can say that, there was no sense of any kind of sadness. It was also clear that the people that work there love them dearly and treat them as family so I had no worries about the ethics of it all. The visitors money clearly keeps the place going doing a valuable job of care.
