Shirley Francona for Kennebec7 (#3)
I was so ignorant. Here in Santa Fe, I had my art business. It was doing well. I had my team of Navajo artists who were making a variety of Native American art objects. I was inspired to get into elephants when I started making wearable accessories using the pachyderms made of Navajo fabrics. Then I got into celadon elephants, which were an immediate hit. I expanded into paintings of elephants, placing them in southwestern environments. Perhaps you’ve seen some. The most popular was the mother and baby elephant in the Grand Canyon. An adjunct to my essentially southwest product line, the elephants became my best sellers.
I felt I had earned some time off. I had spent hours and days with the elephants, but I had never seen a living elephant outside of a circus or a zoo. I headed off to Thailand to go trekking on the back of an elephant. There I was to become ‘schooled.’ First by dear Mimi, the mother elephant who became my companion and sole protector during my unexpected days in the jungle, and then I met Lek Chailert, the legendary founder of the Elephant Nature Park (www.elephantnaturefoundation.org), who has saved so many sick, injured and abused elephants in Thailand. She led Mimi and me out of the wilds.
In the movie, The Earth Trembled, which Kennebec7 is working to get financed, they dramatize the scene where I saved Mimi from being shot in the head after they stole her baby, Bop. In her rage, Mimi killed a mahout. She just grabbed him with her trunk and smashed him against a tree. I still shudder when I remember the sound of that body hitting the tree.
Elephants are giant, powerful creatures, and gentle until you mess with their families. I didn’t realize in those early days that any perception of danger triggers a violent reaction from the matriarchs and subsequently, the entire family. The extremes a mother like Mimi will go to protect her baby are reported in news stories as fits of unprovoked ‘elephant rage.’
It is simply not true. The ‘unprovoked’ part. On the trek I took part in, I was riding Mimi and little Bop was happily traipsing along beside her. Everything was quite peaceful. Then Bop got dizzy and fell over. Later I learned from Maitre that they had fed him some drugs hidden inside a tamarind ball.
Mimi immediately became alarmed and wanted to help Bop get up. They tried to force her to keep trekking and leave Bop behind. She threw me off her back and began attacking the men who were attempting to move Bop onto a truck that had suddenly showed up. The ultimate destination of the truck would be the Big Ears – Big Teeth animal show in Chiang Mai that had elephants and crocodiles. One of their own baby elephants was dying, and they planned to replace him with Bop. Before we could rescue him they actually tried to train him to play the harmonica!
As it turned out, Mimi and I, along with Mint (Lek), had other ideas, which I will share with you in future days.
Namaste,
Shirley Francona
3/27/2010
Santa Fe, New Mexico#3