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Sarara - a happy ending
Piers & Hilary sent us a great story about an elephant who'd fallen in a well - with a happy ending.
PHOTO 1 - We received an early morning radio call at Sarara to say that a very small elephant had fallen into a nearby Singing Well during the night. A rescue & security team immediately swung into action.
Newly arrived guests at Sarara came to watch as the boisterous calf (a 2 month old female) was pulled up out of the well. We could see that she had had her trunk chewed during the night by hyenas but otherwise she was unharmed and none the worse for her overnight experience. Unfortunately the mother was not anywhere to be seen.
So Naipoki, as she was later named, was loaded into a Toyota and taken up to Sarara where she was given fresh water to drink plus loads of TLC!
PHOTO 2 - She immediately bonded to humans and was soon following us all around camp. She came for breakfast in the Mess, then had a cooling dip in the pool, and finally collapsed into a dead sleep for a couple of hours.
PHOTO 3 - Our overriding concern has always been to try to reunite these babies with their mothers. So at around 6:00 p.m, Naipoki was reloaded back into the car. Now back at the wells, we all waited patiently and quietly. Elephants came and went, but not the right herd.
Finally at around 10:00 p.m. came the unmistakable sounds of a female herd with young heading to water. Almost instantly Naipoki pricked her ears, screamed, and rushed off in the general direction of the rumblings. The noise reverberated all around the hills ... trumpeting, gurgling, screams! There was no doubt that Naipoki had found her herd and presumably also her mother! Elation!
We all retired to bed at midnight exhausted but with the strong belief that the mission had been entirely successful.
Then in the morning, another radio call - elephant calf in a well. Would you believe it, there she was, Naipoki again, back in the very same hole as the night before!
PHOTO 4 - Having not had any milk for 36 hours, we now really had no alternative but to call Daphne Sheldrick in Nairobi, who as always responded calmly, quickly and efficiently. By 10:00 a.m, a 12-seater Cessna Caravan had landed at Namunyak airstrip carrying three experienced keepers, several bottles of special milk formula, re-hydrant, fluids and some antibiotics. After a good drink and an antibiotic injection in her bottom (she screamed!), Naipoki was strapped and loaded up and then off into the air for her new life in Nairobi.
We hear that she is absolutely thriving and indeed is currently everyone’s favourite orphan. Must have been all the love and care that she received at Sarara!