The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

There were two baby elephants at the preserve.

Actually they were more toddler elephants.

They looked really funny with their little tusks.

 

The bigger one was a girl, and she had a younger brother.

They liked to play in the water.

Tussling and trying to push each other under.

It was pretty violent.

They would climb on top of each other and hold the other one down.

Of course this isn’t as dangerous when your little brother has a built in snorkel.

They seemed to be having lots of fun.

But then it was time to come out of the river..

They were very sad.

In the afternoon the elephants go down to the river to have their bath.

Some of them like it.

They are very cooperative and go down in the water so their mahouts can splash water on them.

Others refuse to get in so we have to throw buckets of water at them.

It takes a lot of buckets to wash an elephant.

And some places are really hard to reach.

The least pleasant part is when it starts to rain.

The elephants don’t mind the rain though.

After lunch we went out with a different elephant to the banana trees. She was supposed to eat just the leaves and leave the bananas and trees alone. Which she mostly did, because they pick off all of the bananas before they are ripe, though she still seemed interested in some, so her mahout yelled at her.

But then she decided she wanted the trunk of a dead banana tree. A big one. So she pushed it over with her leg and then crushed it under her feet and pulled out a green part from inside. Which she only ate about one bite of before moving on.

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Every morning the elephants come in from a long night of eating in the forest to be fed fruit by the tourists.

Each elephant has different preferences for fruit and vegetables. Some of them like squash and root vegetables. Most of them like corn on the cob. Some of them will only eat it shucked, some of them shuck it themselves, and some of them just eat the whole thing. All of them like bananas (but only the yellow ones) and watermelon, which they eat rind and all.

They all line up behind the railing to be fed.

Some line up next to a platform so the people are above them.

Then they reach their trunks across to get the treats.

They are very excited to get the food.

They grab it in the end of their trunks and bring it into their mouths.

It’s sometimes a bit scary when the trunk comes at you.

But they just really like fruit.

They grab it tightly to be sure not to drop it.

And then bring it to their mouths.