Our first order of business was to get to know the elephants by feeding them huge amounts of squash and turnips. They are amazingly dexterous with those trunks.
Elephants can eat up to 800 lbs of food a day, so our next step was to feed them some more! We got our hands dirty by making grass balls, a messy combination of bananas, food pellets, and grass. Since these are kind of squishy, we popped these directly into the elephant’s mouths.
A kind of long, cane-type grass is the primary food source for these elephants, so next we donned some gloves (the grass is very sharp), grabbed a machete (what could go wrong?) and headed out to harvest some grass. Did I mention it was 96 degrees?
We took the grass down to the river to feed them and interact some more.
Well of course the natural next step was to head to a little pond and give the elephants a mud bath. As I said, elephants eat a lot and nature being what it is, mud is most likely not the only thing they are smearing on the elephants, and themselves. I hear it’s good for the skin.
After smearing them with mud (and other things) it would be rude not to clean them off, so we headed to the river with long brushes and a positive attitude to scrub the elephants down.
Still muddy ourselves, we decided to clean off by repeatedly plunging off a rope swing. Christian specialized in doing repeated back flops until it looked like he had 3rd degree burns back there. Practice makes perfect.
And then, just to relax, we donned life jackets and just took a leisurely float down the river.
That’s if for our elephant adventure! This trip was definitely a keeper despite the 3 hr drive to get there. Our entrance fees help keep the park afloat and our interactions raise awareness of the plight of these beautiful creatures. See you tomorrow.
East Meets West 2020 