Lek Chailert with her friends at the Elephant Nature Park.
Shirley Francona for Kennebec7(#5)
When the fight to save Bop’s life and return the baby elephant back to his mother, Mimi, was won, we all celebrated at Lek’s Elephant Nature Park. My son Andrew and I swam with Mimi and Bop in the river there. They sprayed a lot more water on us than we could ever throw at them with our plastic buckets. We all had a jolly wet time.
A few days later I met Peter Alexander of Kennebec7. He was acquainting himself with the elephants who were hanging with Maximus, the 13-foot tall giant pachyderm. Peter had Rocky with him. They were buddies. Rocky is the five-year-old son of Jodi Thomas, one of the other mainstays at Elephant Nature Park, an American like me, who has bravely rescued her share of abused elephants.
I want to tell you Max’s story. He has passed away since Andrew and I first visited the Park. He was very old, but beloved by the other elephants and the scores of people who visit the Park each day. A generous man had purchased Max for Lek to celebrate his wife’s birthday. At that time Max was a broken down shell of his former self. His legs had been broken when he was hit by an 18-wheel truck during the homeless phase of his long life. He and his mahout were begging on city streets when he was felled by a different kind of behemoth traveling at fifty miles per hour. But, thanks to Lek and her wonderful team at the Park, Max recovered.
So many sad elephants have been amazingly rejuvenated at the Park after suffering the most hideous abuses. Lek told me, “To see the elephants that have been rescued from very bad conditions… when they first arrive at the park they are like the living dead. Their eyes are empty and they are so skinny. Yet today I find them happy, joining new family groups, healthy and starting to play again. That is the most joyful thing to me and makes my heart smile.”
However, Lek has many enemies. People who don’t want to change the animal culture of working elephants like beasts of burden and mistreating them to bend the elephants’ wills. People who resent the world-wide publicity Lek gets from the National Geographic, Time Magazine, Readers Digest, the BBC, the Discovery Channel and other mainstream media outlets. They seek revenge for the changes Lek has inspired in people’s perception of proper elephant care. Here’s one example:
Lek had rescued a three-day-old baby elephant stuck between two trees in the jungle. His mother had been had been shot dead by farmers. “Never before in history,” Lek said, “has it been documented that an elephant less than a week old survived without the mother. I stayed up with the baby, whom I named Ging Mai, day and night for six days.” Lek passed out on the seventh night. She had been providing the baby milk from a bottle. In the middle of the night Ging Mai woke her with a kiss. “It was then,” Shirley told me, “that I knew he would live.”
However, her enemies were oh so clever. Lek explains, “One day a group of men came to see Ging Mai –veterinarians- they said the government needed to check my baby elephant. This was just days before his first birthday. They injected him with cyanide. Ging Mai ran to the river and drank and drank water… I ran to him and he pushed at me… his eyes were all red. He was in agony and screaming. He died in my arms.”
Shirley Francona
Santa Fe, New Mexico
03/31/2010
Kennebec7’s Philosophy
"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal,
nor between what is true and what is false.
A thing is not necessarily either true or false;
it can be both true and false."
Harold Pinter
(The Nobel Prize for Literature 2005)