An Elephant Never Forgets — Mostly Harmless

BULL ELEPHANTS CAN STAND as high as 9ft, and weigh as much as 12,000 pounds. Their skin is around one-inch thick. If one wants to step on you, or back into you, there is no stopping it. An elephant in motion stays in motion, unless it decides to change course on its own.

Luckily for us, the elephants at Elephant Nature Park (ENP) in Chiang Mai, Thailand are gentle giants, happy to live out the rest of their long lives protected and among friends.

Established in the 1990’s, Elephant Nature Park (ENP) is an open-air rescue center in northern Thailand that has provided sanctuary for formerly mistreated, exploited elephants. Visitors can toss whole melons and gourds into gaping, expectant mouths, and after a period of acclimation, can actually walk with the massive mammals on their home turf, and join them in their favorite swimming holes.

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An Elephant Never Forgets

For these particular pachyderms, I hope the line above isn’t true. Forced at a young age into a life of exploitation and abuse, the elephants at ENP were rescued from miserable conditions on the streets of Bangkok and around. Trained to perform tricks and accept unwitting tourists on their backs, they are a delight to see in a city setting, but those lives are much darker than they appear. Isolation is not healthy for any elephant, male or female. Keeping them from their kind should be looked at like solitary confinement for humans.

In this type of captivity, malnutrition is inevitable. An elephant can eat more than 660 lbs (300 kg) of food, and drink 40 gallons (150 liters) of water every single day, making proper care outstandingly expensive and honestly, pretty much impossible on city streets.

Great, now she just needs 220 more of those to be full for the day.

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The Elephant in the Room

Before our visit to ENP I was eager for my chance to perch atop an elephant, but quickly learned the error of my ways after a video and education session. An elephant doesn’t readily accept a rider. It’s only after severe punishment that they acquiesce. I’m sure there are a variety of videos showing this “training program” online, but I’d rather not see that again.

Just don’t ride an elephant. If one is allowing you on its back, it probably went through torture to do so.

Fernando demonstrating how to enjoy an elephant without riding it.

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I Meant What I Said and I Said What I Meant. An Elephan't’s Faithful One-Hundred Percent. (From Horton Hears a Who)

After meeting best friends Jokia and Mae Perm, I started to believe Dr. Seuss could speak to animals.

Jokia is from the logging trade in a Karen village along the Burmese border. After she miscarried her baby she became severely depressed and refused to work. Her former owner deliberately blinded her in both eyes as punishment.

She met Mae Perm at Elephant Nature Park in 1999, and the two have been inseparable since. Mae Perm acts as Jokia’s “seeing eye elephant”, giving her the confidence she needs to live a great life.

(EDIT: Sadly Mae Perm passed away in April of 2016. Jokia’s mahout and the experts at ENP have helped her adapt to a new adoptive family. They even learned to walk slowly with her due to her handicap.)

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The mutually-respectful relationship between elephant and mahout (like an elephant chaperone) reminded me of Rudyard Kipling’s claim that “the elephant’s a gentleman”. There is wisdom and intention in every movement, from shifting weight back and forth between their huge padded feet, to curling the tip of their trunk around a small nut.

Elephants are also similar to man in a very interesting way. After a nearly two-year gestation period, the timelines of elephant and man begin to sync up. Entering the “workforce” around age 16, they stop growing around age 20, and start balding at 30. They settle for light work (let’s call that retirement) at 50, and typically die at around age 70.

One last similarity that hits close to home for me; elephants can become intoxicated after eating over-ripe fruit. While they don’t bottle it and drink it at dinner, I like to think there has been a party animal or two who wasn’t too terribly upset when the fruit had passed its prime.

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The Mission Statement at Elephant Nature Park is about providing a sanctuary for endangered animals, restoring the rainforest, and preserving the local cultures - all of which can be accomplished by educating everyone who walks across their raised platforms.

Today there are no more than 4,000 Asian Elephants (also known as Indian Elephants) alive in Thailand, and fewer than 30,000 globally, which officially makes them an endangered species. The greatest threat to this wise giant is that they are being pushed out of their habitat by a booming human population. They need a lot of room to graze, and that space is running out - along with the time they have left.

VERDICT: Mostly Harmless, but be on high alert when you leave the platform for the elephants’ territory, especially if there are calves present.
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LINKS:

Elephant Nature Park: an elephant rescue and rehabilitation center in Northern Thailand accepting visitors and volunteer help.

Chiang Mai, Thailand: a cultural and religious center in northern Thailand.