One day, an elephant and its baby were walking down a path when the baby fell into a hole.
No, that’s not a setup for a bad joke, nor the start of a heartfelt story. In a Thailand park, a baby elephant literally fell down into a hole, with the mother anxiously standing guard over the calf.
But then veterinarians and park staff showed up and sedated the mother so that they could pull the baby out. But because of the sedation, the mother fell into the hole, too.
Now consider what you’d do. Maybe it would help to know that the year-old elephant would likely weigh around 500 kilograms, and a fully grown one would weigh almost 4,000 kilograms. The point is – a rope isn’t exactly going to cut it.
So wildlife rescuers turned to the next best thing – a truck-mounted boom lift and a digger machine. They got the mother out first, needing to perform CPR on her as they cleared a path out of the hole for the calf to climb out and be reunited with her.
Park authorities say that they think the pair belong to a herd of elephants that was traveling through the jungle nearby and that they safely returned to the jungle after the rescue.
