Elephant Nature Park

These past few weeks have been pretty full on so I apologize for not being able to post any new entries. So lets rewind a little bit to my time at the Elephant Nature Park. Like I said before it’s a wonderful place and I hope to visit again soon. A typical day starts with breakfast at 7 (I think I only made one breakfast), followed by morning chores at 7:30. Then we’d either go on a hike with the elephants or do another chore before lunch. The day visitors and the fruit trucks arrived around 11-ish and those ellies (elephants) can put away some food. I was told the average elephant eats around 400 lbs of food a day. So after unloading the trucks we cut the fruit up and get to hand feed them (my favorite time). We then feed ourselves before taking the ellies down to the river where they lay down for their baths which we also provide. Immediately afterwards the younger ellies play in the mud and its very entertaining to watch. The mud acts as a natural sunscreen for them. I’ve got some great videos but they would take too long to put on the blog. We then have afternoon projects followed by dinner and more free time. For week long volunteers they take you on a hike through the jungle with a family of elephants where you camp overnight and the ellies are allowed to wander the mountainside before you get up the next day to track them down. Tegan, Bec, and I got to help Boonshu track Lilly who is a fun loving elephant clever enough to stuff mud into her bell so its harder to find her (shown below).

After living and working at the park for a week you start to get to know the different elephants. You can distinguish their movements, expressions, and subtle differences. But most of all you learn their stories and what they’ve been through and what their lives could have been. Everyone loves Jokia who was blinded in both eyes by humans but found a friend in Mae Perm, the park’s first elephant, who hardly ever leaves her side. You can always hear them trumpeting back and forth. There’s the towering Max, one of the tallest elephants in Thailand who was hit by a semi-truck and walks with a slow limp but can move when he wants to. I believe it was Lilly who was addicted to drugs that her owners gave her so she could work around the clock. Medow had her hip broken when her owners tied her up to a bull elephant in ‘must’ and he attacked her after she didn’t accept him (her pic was in my last entry). BK can be easily distinguished by his single tusk, the other was cut off by a chainsaw and he still has to get routine cleanings to prevent infection. And then there is Hope, the adolescent elephant that Lek saved as a child who will always have a life free from abuse and neglect.

But on the second or third day at the park I found this cheeky (its an British word) little baby elephant at the end of the platform named Aura. I started to feed her and really just fell in love with her. After that I kept coming back day after day to the same spot to feed Aura (see pic). By the second feeding I knew her likes and her dislikes, her commands, just everything. She didn’t eat the green bananas but still would take the mushed up yellow ones. She would often spit out the watermelon skin so I began to scoop out the good stuff with a spoon, then she would suck out any remaining juice with her trunk. I knew Aura rushed through her food so that she could quickly try to steal Medow’s. I knew how to get her to open her mouth so you could place food directly on her tongue (as shown). I could get her to give out kisses with her trunk. It actually seemed like I was her mahout during feeding time. Unfortunately not all stories here have a happy ending. Aura and her mother, Mae Boon, are on lease, which means the park doesn’t actually own them but they take care of them anyways because that’s how much Lek loves elephants. We were told shortly before the end of the week that they suspect Mae Boon and Aura’s owners are going to come within the next 3 months to take them back so that Aura can be put through her ‘training’. And there’s nothing that can be done because it’s not a matter of money but rather the owners are just not willing to sell. Despite all this we try to give her a happy life while we can and we hope that all the training Aura has had through positive reinforcement will allow her to have a less harsh training process. I would like to try and come back this spring after I get back from Laos and hopefully Mae Boon and Aura will still be there.