Chiang Mai Chang

chang = elephant = brand of thai beer Elephants don't like to be pet--it's annoying to them. But they love taking baths to cool off and they love the feeling of bristles scratching their thick skin. The preserve encourages bathtime because it sends the volunteers home with a feeling that they've bonded with these creatures and will be more likely to return, tell friends, leave donations, foster an elephant. Baths are also a good way to check for wound, parasites, etc.

The elephants at the Elephant Nature Preserve only eat, play and sleep.

Notice the matouk/handler on her head!

After this baby took a spill, two of her aunties came charging forward to check on her. Soon her whole family had gathered to assess the damage. The aunties charged one of the volunteers nearby taking pictures, as if she blamed him and wanted to scare him.

Chiang Mai is a city surrounded by a moat. It's considerably calmer than Bangkok but still has the sex workers and is famous for its night bazaar that blankets many city blocks. I stayed in a guesthouse that was the former safe-haven for an opium warlord. Chiang Mai would normally be a peaceful place to visit but I awoke every morning at 4:30 to roosters cock-a-doodle-do-ing. These were roosters from hell. They went on until they were hoarse and then kept going, screeching late into the morning. But you don't want to read about roosters, you want to read about elephants.

I wanted to see elephants. They are my second favorite animal, right after cats. There are elephants camps outside and around Chiang Mai that let you ride them, watch them put on a little show, have them paint a picture for you. Looking at the pictures made me feel kind of bad for the elephants. That can't be comfortable, carrying around tourists on a little platform. By chance I walked by an office advertising an elephant preserve. They take you out to spend a day feeding and bathing elephants that were rescued from the more abusive industries in thailand, from landmine accidents in Cambodia, etc. The cost of your tour supports the non-profit Elephant Nature Park. More my thing.

I learned a lot about these wonderful creatures. They taught us how to tell the difference between Asian and African elephants. In zoos around the globe, you'll typically find Asian elephants. They're more docile. They also have larger brains and stronger memories, giving substance to the phrase, "an elephant never forgets." Cartoon elephants are usually African, with their larger ears and longer tusks.

Elephants live well into their 70s. Mothers are pregnant for 22 months and twins are naturally aborted purely because of their size--the womb can't support two. Babies stay close to their mothers for the first 4-5 years of their lives. They reach sexual maturity at age 13. Males go into musth once a year, a physiological time that allows them to appear dominant to the rest of the pack and able to get chicks. The excess testosterone also makes them very aggressive.

They have a matriarchal society, the eldest female ruling each family. Families stay together their whole lives. Males sometimes go off on their own, especially in musth, mixing up the gene pool.

Elephants are just like people: gay and straight, friendly and aloof, monogamous and promiscuous, hard-working and lazy, sweet and naughty.

In Thailand, the attitude towards the elephant is a bit of a contradiction. They are considered sacred creatures and, at the same time, abused in the logging and tourist industries. "Elephant begging" on the streets of Bangkok is a huge problem. A handler walks around, selling food so tourists can feed the elephants and take photos. This gives charm to Thailand--it's fantastic to see these creatures wandering around the streets at night--but it is also illegal and quite abusive. Elephants don't have great vision and the bright lights damage their eyes. They also hear much better than us. They can hear each others low frequency groans for 100km away, humans losing this perception only 10km away. So the wild traffic noises and music of the discos in Bangkok are frightening. When you see these animals swaying--it looks like they are dancing--it is actually a sign of stress. The worst part: they are often doing double shifts, working day and night. The preserve I visited an elephant who is a recovering amphetamine addict. These animals are drugged to make them more interactive with the tourists.

There is a tradition here developed by certain hilltribes in the north. It's called the pujaan. When an elephant is three years old, they take it from its mother and chain it into a wooden stall. For three days it is deprived of food, water and sleep. When it objects, groaning or trying to kick, they poke it with sticks that have sharp nails on the end and tight chains which cut deep into its skin. I watched a video. After these three days, the animal is left bloodied and hopeless. The hilltribe people, believing differently than mainstream Buddhists, see this as a necessary evil. They consider elephants dangerous creatures and believe you must break its spirit. Lek, the woman who created the Elephant Nature Park, believes that this brutality is actually responsible for the few cases of the elephant charging at people and killing its handler. They can pick their handler out of a crowd of hundreds. These are smart and emotional creatures. They do not forget.

Another old tradition maintained across all of Thailand is having one elephant and one handler. This handler, called a mahout, trains the elephant and becomes his/her companion for a long time. There are gentle and brutal mahouts. Traditionally the mahout uses a hook, sharp enough to pierce the elephants' skin, using punial methods to train the elephant. Lek, the woman behind the preserve I mentioned earlier, does not let her mahouts use hooks. Though this is scary for many of them at first who believe elephants to be dangerous, it turns out that the elephants actually trust the mahouts more and therefore, they are safer in the long run. Lek has them train the babies at the preserve to give kisses, sit, etc, with a reward system to prove that it is possible to use gentler methods in training these great beasts. I got kissed and didn't want to wash the dirt off my face that night! (I did though, don't worry.)

Let me tell you about this Lek person. She was born into a hilltribe in northern thailand, the granddaughter of a shaman who looked over the pujaan. It is actually a religious ceremony where he sacrifices chickens, burns incense, chants. She saved a man's life when she was a child and as a gift, her people gave her an elephant. Thus began a life-long love affair.

National Geographic went up with Lek to get video footage of the pujaan. She taped her own copy and gave it to some friends in the business, telling them they couldn't release it until after the national geographic show aired. Lek's copy fell into PETA's hands and they came to thailand, scandalizing it. PETA's tactics involve kind of a shock and guilt approach to raising awareness. PETA told tourist to boycott thailand and this supposedly hurt the industry for a while in the early 90s. The thai government blamed Lek and called her a traitor. Today she can still not get financial funding or even register as a non-profit charity in her own country, though the park is registered in the US, UK, in many European nations. She was already rejected by the hilltribes having denounced their pujaan and left years earlier. But now the media was too much. Someone in the logging industry put a hit on Lek. She was luckily friends with one of thailand's princesses who helped her go into hiding. Lek had friends care for her elephants. However, someone gave a cyanide pill, killing her favorite baby.

The president of PETA found out about this and resigned. She and Lek are good friends today.

The good that came of the baby's death? An anonymous businessman asked Lek what she needed to continue to care for the elephants. Her answer: land. He asked if she had a spot in mind and she did. Today, it is the Elephant Nature Park.

The Elephants
There are 30 at the preserve right now but only a handful belong to Lek. Their owners send elephants to Lek when they are too small to work, or on maternity leave or when they are sick and need time to rehabilitate.

Lek's elephants include Jakia, an middle-aged female who is blind in both eyes. She was used in the logging industry and they forced her to work through a pregnancy. One day at work she gave birth on a steep hill, the newborn fell, plunging to its death. They kept working her that day. She protested violently, attacking her mahout who poked out her eyes in return. Lek heard about this and bought her. Now she is a foster mom to the babies at the park.

There is a female elephant with amber eyes, considered beautiful and good for breeding. Her previous owner locked her in a pen with a male in musth. He attacked her for two day and broke her back. The loggers kept working her as well. Now she lives at the park and spends a considerable part of the day in the water, the weightlessness relieving some of her chronic back pain.

An eight-year-old elephant born in the wild but lost its mother is named Jungle Boy. He has two tusks, very long for an asian elephant. The older females think he's the cat's meow.

The males have a hierarchy of their own, determining who get the ladies. If one goes into musth, he slides into the number one spot. The second at the park went to a very tall elephant, thought to be possibly the tallest in asia. He had his current girlfriend with him the whole, who stands in his shadow adoringly. When she stepped away to eat, a park volunteer pointed out to me that his ex-girlfriend had approached him in her absence. Elephant melodrama.

The female elephants have started to produce milk for their foster babies, though they haven't given birth. Herds developed around each of the babies and they have formed five families. Raising a baby is of the "it takes a village" philosophy.

One of the elephants, described to me as "the cheerleader" of the park actually struts when she walks. I would like her expect that they also call her "part-time mom." She's given birth to a young girl whom she leaves with her aunties all day while she is strutting about in front of the males.

There is a favorite elephant named Hope who is an eight-year-old male. He plays tricks on all of the elephants, sneaking up behind them to scare them. The park volunteers put a bell around his neck to keep him from pissing off the other elephants.

I loved watching the babies nurse and play with old tires that serve as their toys. They like to tease the dogs at the park, poking them with their trunks.

I can see myself bringing my children back to this park one day. You can stay a week if you like and work at the park, washing fruit and making banana-ball treats for them. Gardening and cleaning. This is ideal for kids. Afterwards, I would go spend another week relaxing on a beach here. So many things in life to look forward to.

elephantnaturepark.org