Woke up today at 5:30am to go out again with the elephants. This time I walked with them instead of riding. It was such a great experience. It was like being one of the herd. I walked with a couple of the other guests, BT and the elephant manager named Bee. Some of the other guests rode the elephants while we walked along.
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| Walking with the elephants |
We walked through the bush for about one hour. In that time we talked about the elephants and saw some more kudus, zebra, baboons and warthogs.
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| Kudu |
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| Baboon on a termite hill |
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| Zebra herd |
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| Warthog |
At the end of the ride/walk, just before they let the elephants out to graze for the day we fed them their pellets and took more photos with them. When I was posing with BT and Cathy she used her trunk to grab my arm. It was SO strong! I couldn’t believe it! She could definitely break someone’s arm with that thing!
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| Feeding Paseka |
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| Posing with Cathy |
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| Feet |
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| Warona, Cathy, Me and BT |
After I said goodbye to the elephants with tears in my eyes, BT drove me back to camp for breakfast. I had a quick bite to eat and then back to my room to shower and make sure all my bags were packed. When I went back to the main area Aaron met me and said that my plane was delayed a couple hours. Since I had some free time Bee took me to the elephant boma for a behind the scenes tour. He showed me all their offices, the laboratory and all the elephant teeth, skulls and tusks they had laying around. I didn’t know this but elephants only get 6 sets of teeth in their lifetime. They have only molars and they are in a block or what they call a plate. When the new teeth grow they push the current plate out. Once they lose all 6 of their plates they are in trouble as they have no teeth to chew their food and they will starve to death. Really sad.
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| Elephant Boma |
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| The stocks |
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| The lab |
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| Elephant Skulls |
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| Elephant teeth |
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| Tusks |
I was interested in all the medications they have for the elephants so Bee showed me their medication cabinet. They use a lot of the same medications I am already used to. To all my vet friends, check out the picture of the Metacam box - 15mg/ml! Yikes! They also had a huge stock of domperidone they were giving one of the older female elephants, Sherini. Shirin adopted Naledit when her mother died back in November. Shiring was lactating but did not have enough milk for Naledi. The to try and get her to let down enough milk once she adopted Naledi but it didn’t work. They have to supplement her with a huge amount of milk. They have bags upon bags of milk powder. Each bag weighs 50kgs and she goes through one every 2-3 days!
After my tour it was time for me to go. I was driven to the airstrip and boarded a plane that had to come Abu to drop off supplies. It was definitely a larger plane. Bonus! My pilot was Roderick from Canada. He was an excellent pilot and very courteous. Smooth ride back to Maun. Once I got my bags I walked across the street to Tana’s office where I had parked Trevor. Drove back to the cottage and went down to the clinic to see if there were any patients there. There was about 16 dogs that Nation had dropped off for me to do surgery on the next day. I made sure they all had food and water and then went back to the cottage to do laundry and prepare for the next day.
Abu Camp was absolutely amazing. I will never forget my time there. I thanked Tana a million times over for allowing me to have that experience. I would love to live there forever with the elephants. Maybe one day…….
"You know......they say an elephant never forgets.
What they don't tell you is, you never forget an elephant."
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