Quick baby elephant blog

Last week on our way back from the villages I stopped to visit the baby elephant that I first saw when it was 4 days old. Ya who works at the office is a huge animal lover and while dogs are her first love elephants are also loved too. When we went last time we didn't have any food for the elephants as I had not planned to stop so I said we would go back and take some food especially for the mother. The baby will normally only breast feed until about 1 year old. So we set Tues afternoon to visit and watch them be bathed. I had dreams of standing in the river washing down the elephants but once I saw what they do I realized that didn't make sense.

We went to the big vegetable and fruit market on our way out of town. At first we were going to buy bananas and sugar cane for people but luckily I noticed some big bags of older bananas and found out they were packed to sell to elephant centers at a much lower price. So we bought 2 big bags of bananas and 1 big bag of sugar cane.

I am sure one elephant could easily eat 10 or more bags which would be probably 8 bushels in US quantities. When we arrived other mahouts and the one I know were arriving with carts and trucks full of banana stalks. The mahout said the mother doesn't have enough milk to totally feed the baby so there is some concern when he cries. I guess he wakes up at 4-5am wanting to eat - sounds familiar....

We fed half our food to the mother and some crushed banana to the baby and then went down to the river. There are about 40 elephants in this big field but we were warned to not go up to them without a mahout so we watch from a respectable distance. Most are chained to posts so they don't wander.

Here are a few pictures and then a video to follow:




The baby is very playful - after all that is a baby's job. He loves to push into you and scratch himself against anything. I tried to push him back sometimes and could barely win and he is just 6 weeks old! You do know it when he steps on your food too!