Beaten up by an Elephant

This is another post from my old (deleted - thanks Google) blog, but it's a public service lesson - Don't fight elephants. 


Elephants like people, albeit giant grey people. They have different personalities. It was made fairly clear to me that there are some elephants I should not approach because they can be temperamental. Such elephants will tolerate someone getting close to them if they are bringing food or if the mahout tells them to pose, but even then there must be some rules and you can't go prodding eyes or pinching ears. You should not tease the elephants with food because they get angry and can lash out. The signs around the camp say to follow the mahout's instructions, and while it may be difficult to accept that a little dark-skinned man who has been riding elephants for his whole life has learned more about their behaviour than you have in the five minutes since you got out of the minibus, it's true.

One Russian tourist, who I'll call Your Drunken Uncle, decided that the ideal elephant to try ignoring the mahout's instructions on was Erawan. Named after the nearby waterfall, Erawan is 73 years old. Though he isn't quite the biggest elephant, as you can see, he has the biggest tusks and he's hard as nails - When he was about 50, before Taweechai Elephant Camp opened, a poacher shot him right in the face. Given that Erawan still has his tusks, I like to think that he gave the poacher a thorough gouging.

Erawan had been cooling off for a few weeks after getting aggressive with someone who was teasing him with bananas and he was being eased back into work. The staff were quite clear that while guests could pose with him, they should not touch him. "No touch."  Your Drunken Uncle could actually speak a little Thai, as he was telling the elephants to "eat snacks!" in Thai, so he can't claim ignorance. He decided to grab Erawan's leg. All Erawan really did in response to that was give him a knock with his tusk to warn him, but since Erawan weighs over 6,000kg and Your Drunken Uncle about 60kg, he went flying and thwacked into a tree, hard. It took a long time for him to get up, but he may have used that time to reflect on the importance of following instructions, particularly around fabulously enormous animals.

I won't be updating this blog any more - go to The Penang Blog to see my new and exciting Malaysia blog!