ELEPHANT RIDING IN THE JUNGLE

Well today is going to be a long day. We had to be up and ready to go by 7:30...I don't think I am even out of the house that early normally for work! But today will be worth it, we have some elephants to ride! Matt arranged a day out with Patara Elephant Farm, a group who help to rescue and adopt neglected elephants. Each elephant is assigned a caregiver - one caregiver to one elephant. They get to know their caregiver and create a bond with each other. 

Once the elephants are in their care, Patara work to ensure the elephants are back to healthy, through observation and various scientific tests. Once the elephant is deemed healthy, they are introduced to the elephant herd at Patara, which is around 60 elephants, including about 9 cute little baby elephants. In recent years the elephant population in Thailand has decreased by almost half, and Patara are trying to get the numbers back up, so reproduction is a large aspect to their program. 

It was really great to hear about the steps they take to stay a very humane elephant program. When we first arrived at Patara, there were two sets of mom and baby elephants waiting to eat their breakfast of bananas, bamboo, and some sort of flower.  The baby elephants were so stinking adorable!! The youngest was only 5 weeks old. Ali and I couldn't decide which was the cutest, the baby tigers yesterday or this little guy. He was so clumsy! He kept trying to eat the bananas and other yummy bits, would pick them up with his trunk, try to eat them, and drop them from his mouth. Where his mom then proceeded to pick up his dropped breakfast and eat it for herself. He eventually gave up on the hard foods and settled for some of mom's good old elephant milk. We also watched as he had an apparently amazing time playing in some mud...in love with this little guy!!

So today, we had the chance to be the "Elephant Caregivers". We started by feeding our elephants some bananas, apparently the way to an elephants big heart is their stomach - so we made sure to feed our elephant for the day lots and lots of bananas! We also learned some commands for the elephants. "Bonne" - meant trunk up and mouth open. If your elephant did this properly, you would say "Deedee" - which meant good girl/good boy. "How" meant stop and "Ma" meant come. We also learned our elephants, my elephant was quite a big girl. She was a 29 year old names Metacome. By the way, I am pretty sure that I have miss-spelled all of those commands, as well as my elephants name....

Once our elephants had eaten all of our bananas, we conducted a daily health check. First step - check to make sure that our elephant had slept on their sides last night. Apparently a healthy elephant will lay down when it sleeps. They only sleep for about 4-5 hours a day and will lay down for about 15 minutes, then stand up and lay on the other side. They have to do this because they are so large, laying on one side for too long is too much a strain on their hearts. You can tell if they have slept laying down my seeing how dirty they are - if their sides and ears are covered in dirt, that's a good thing. Second step - check to make sure the elephant is sweating, and the only place they do this is...their cuticles! Right above their toenails, so if there is a bit of wetness there, that's a good thing. Third step - ears are flapping back and forth and the tail is wagging, this is a sign of a happy elephant, kind of like a dog's wagging tail. Fourth and final step - checking the elephant poop. My elephant's caregiver said we didn't have to do this part (thank goodness!), but Matt had to get involved. This step involves checking the consistency of the elephants poop for texture (you want to be able to easily pull the poop apart and you don't want large leaves left in the poop, that means the elephants teeth are bad), moisture levels (you want water to drip from the poop when squeezed, this means the elephant is hydrated), and smell (you don't want a strong smell, otherwise the elephant is having intestinal problems).

After our health checks we then dusted off our elephants and watered them - you literally just stick the hose in their trunks, they fill 'em up, and then they blast the water in their mouths. We were even lucky enough to get some elephant kisses with this big trunks of theirs!!

After all of this, we were able to start riding our elephants! After getting on, it was a little scary at first, but you quickly get used to it. You sit right up at the base of their heads, with your knees tucked up behind their ears. There were a couple of points where I felt a bit unsteady and you can actually feel the elephant tighten their ears against your leg to hold you up. As the day progressed I just became more and more amazed with the intelligence of these amazing animals!

After riding through the jungle for about an hour, we made it to a watering hole, where we bathed our elephants...having to bath a big, tall elephant is a lot of work!! They have a pretty big surface area! After giving our elephants bathes our main guide told us that we had earned an amazing lunch, prepared for us by the wives of the elephant caregivers, it was all traditional northern Thai foods - coconut and pineapple cakes, bbq pork, various fruits, sticky rice, and lots of other amazing foods.

We hopped back up on our elephants and made our way to the camp, where we said our goodbyes and watched as our elephants lumbered on into the sunset (well not quite, it wasn't that late yet...).

It had bee such a long day that we decided to head back to the wonderful air conditioning of our apartment. The boys decided that pizza would be a great break from all the Thai we have been eating, so they ventured out to find a pizza place Trip-Advisor recommended. They were gone for quite some time, and then returned saying that it in fact wasn't there and they had decided instead to get some Thai street food. It was pretty tasty and really inexpensive. Let's hope that we don't "feel" the effects of this adventurous decision later on tonight!!