New Friends of the Not-So-Furry Sort

For Valentine's day this year, I made new friends. Of the gargantuan, four-legged, flappy-eared type. 

Elephant Nature Park, a project started in the 90s, is first and foremost an elephant sanctuary and rehabilitation center. ENP rescues injured and mistreated elephants, buying them from hard labor and abuse, and teaches them that humans can be kind. Since the elephants are unreleasable they're brought to a park to heal, where they spend days roaming and bathing at will, eating watermelon and bananas and corn through the day to their heart's desire. 

The park runs other programs, as well: herds of buffalo saved from the slaughterhouse mingle amongst the elephants, and dogs roam as they will-- some of them, anyway. The park is home to over 450 canines; originally opened as a refuge for dogs left behind in the 2011 Bangkok floods, the shelter now acts as a home for the permanently disabled and an adoption facility for the rest. 

ENP as a whole is actually incredibly well-run: they've developed an ecotourism niche based on the principle of experiencing elephants through love– "with no riding" is a key phrase in their marketing materials– generating the exorbinate income needed to simply keep the place running through drawing hundreds of tourists per day and dozens of volunteers per week. They've brought in Mahouts to work with individual elephants, teaching them to earn trust and results through positive reinforcement rather than with weapons and fear. 

Elephants like watermelons almost as much as I do!

Yeah, the visits are expensive, and yeah, the volunteers pay to help out, but considering the work that goes into the place and the thousands and thousands of pounds of fresh fruit crushed to a pulp by the elephants on the daily, not to mention the largely unrecognized work the dog project requires, it's actually pretty reasonable. Where else do you get to walk up to 76-year-old elephants, hand them a piece of watermelon, and scratch them begin the ears like a puppy dog as they pop it into their mouth and happily crush it to smithereens?

We do all of that and more. We feed them. We watch them roll in the mud. We give scratches. We walk into the river and bathe the lazy ones, tossing bucket after bucket of water over their backs before they leave us to spray dust over themselves once more. 

And we learn their stories. 

This is what happens when an elephant steps

 on a land mine.

Pops, a "smaller" girl in her thirties known for her gentle manner, reaches her trunk onto the platform to receive chunks of watermelon we hold out to her, wrapping our hands with surprising muscle and substantial slobber. 

The last group we meet is a skittish trio. The largest, a blind female, claims half the corn set in front of the group with gusto. A smaller female favors her left hind leg; a victim of forced breeding, her hip was broken by an aggressive male. The smallest elephant moves her mangled front foot restlessly; scarred tissue and a single crooked nail reveal results of a land mine injury. 

Elephants range in age from two years-- born at the sanctuary-- to nearing 80, skin sunk deep into hollows behind their eyes and tough, leathery skin thinned soft and delicate with age. 

One of the youngest, a wild calf, was brought to the sanctuary from a national park to heal after villagers found him walking with a leg caught in the jaws of a poaching trap. An older girl walks on an awkwardly bent leg, crookedly healed after a tree fell and broke her ankle while working for loggers. 

These elephants are, for lack of a better phrase, the lucky ones. They're not working any more, and they've become famous. As other companies look to the Nature Park's overwhelming success they, too, begin to change their view of business. One or two companies have shifted approaches from riding to humane ecotourism. And when leaders turn, others will follow.