A Day with Elephants

I’ve always known that elephants are amazing creatures, but they’d never really captured by fascination until Dave and Lydia went to the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand last year.  The experience sounded amazing and the photos they took of smiling elephants made me want to see it for myself.  I feel so lucky I had that chance!

The Elephant Nature Park, founded by an incredible woman named Lek Chailert, is a marvelous place. It’s about 200 acres of land nestled between mountains and bounded by a river. The property was purchased and donated by some Americans. 

Thirty six elephants, who were rescued from living on the street or under other “distressed” situations, now live freely in this open space…along with lots of lazy cats and docile dogs who freely roam about (Lek’s organization also immunizes animals throughout the region for rabies – whew!). This clearly was like Disney for animals - the happiest place on earth.

Now that I have spent time up close with elephants, I realize that photos of elephants – even happy ones – cannot begin to capture the spirit, gentleness, and enormity of elephants in real life.   I also realize that looking at elephant pictures probably isn’t that exciting to people who haven’t been in their company (that was true for me, that's for sure!).  However, it’s taken great restraint to not load ALL of our Elephant Nature Park pictures on here - it was that great of an experience!  Here are some snapshots of our day…

We got to feed and pet them while they were waiting their turns for their daily check up with the park vet:

Feeding elephants is a big job since they eat for 16-18 hours each day! We were able to pet and touch the elephants whenever we were with park personnel. Elephant skin is surprisingly rough and firm - I thought it might be squishy since the skin is droopy. They also have way more hair than I expected.

Each elephant at the park has its own caretaker (mahout).  While mahouts who use elephants to farm or do tricks use sharp objects to "steer" the creatures, mahouts at the park controlled the animals with verbal commands, food as rewards, and a whole lot of petting and playing.  It was clear that the elephants loved their caretakers!

An elephant with her mahout

Elephants are really social and "hang out" in groups. They like to nuzzle each other with their trunks...and to frolick in the dirt and mud:

Lydia liked playing with the dogs while we sat in the field watching the elephants rough-house each other.

After all that play time, the elephants needed to cool off and clean up.  We waded into the river with them, splashing them with water.  So fun!!

Our elephant was a lot cleaner than we were when we were done!

I could ramble on and on about how we spent the day, but I won't.  I think this photo sums up how we felt at the end of the day:
 

Happy