But the most interesting thing for Peter and I was shadowing the vet. Here the elephant named Hope had slashed his trunk and is getting it cleansed and is being given an antibiotic which Peter helped administer. On his next visit the vet actually let Peter put the needle in.

Then there are the other medical cases: The landmine victim which luckily only blew the back half of her foot off leaving her the ability to limp as opposed to loosing the whole leg or it mushrooming out completely, the broken back victim, Lily the ex-drug addict (she had two owners and therefore two jobs, trekking in the day and illegal logging at night so they kept her pumped up on amphetamines), the very rare white elephant who is prone to ticks, BK who had one tusk hacked off deep into the root with a chainsaw by poachers, Max who at approximately 80 years old has done everything a domesticated Thai elephant could do but got hit by an 18 wheeler truck (and here Carl is cleaning out a nasty, deep abscess), and then there's Stevie, the poor cat who stole a fish and had is eyes gouged out (someone was told to kill him but they brought him here instead).

As well as frequent jungle walks we did nearby, one of the regular special events the Elephant Nature Park do is go to a place they call the Haven. It's basically a huge piece of jungley mountain that they lease from the government to allow their animals to graze overnight unfettered. While the elephants are under constant watch by the mahouts all day every day, unfortunately at night at the park they have to be chained to stop them getting into neighboring farmers crops. If they're caught, they will be shot. At the Haven, they have the chance to be as they would in the wild. And for us that meant a wonderful (and sometimes slippery) 3 hour hike and a lift across the river to escort them up there. Along the way we passed trees with orange ribbons tied around them. Lek had those pieces of cotton blessed by monks and then she and the monks distributed them around the forest. Thais are very religious people and a tree blessed by a monk is enough to keep it from turning into lumber.

A huge open air bamboo house in the middle of nowhere was where we all camped down, ate dinner, drank Chang and listened to Pom tell stories and then the mahouts got out their instruments. They'd been on the Thai whiskey so it became quite a raucous affair! In the middle of the night as we lay under the mozzi nets it was great to hear the rumbling sounds of branches being crushed far off in the distance. We were up early to breakfast and then a fast hike with a mahout to find his E. We came back with Hope who stopped off to see Pom and get a treat.

While the ideal situation for ENP would be to have these beautiful animals living in the wild, achieving that is a near impossibility as there is very little protected land where they can be safely released without fear of recapture. And the money elephant tourism generates in Thailand is huge. So Lek is also trying to educate the industry that there are humane ways to get an elephant to do what you want it to do, without having to resort to beating, stabbing and starving it into submission. Here are pictures of some of the lessons:

Please check out their website at: www.elephantnaturefoundation.org and if you get a chance to go, we highly recommend it.

HMM 15/10/06