Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  Young elephants have a rapid metabolism. A newborn will suckle its mother about once every ten minutes, ingesting little and often, so in the nursery, newborns are fed on demand, encouraged gradually into a three-hourly routine. We add cooked oatmeal porridge to fortify the milk after the age of four months, and once the calves are three, we wean them off milk. By this time their intake of natural vegetation will have increased but they will still need supplementary assistance in the form of coconut, which contains the kind of fat an elephant can assimilate. The condition of an elephant is reflected in the face, not the stomach, which becomes bloated when malnourished. The cheekbones beneath the eye sockets should not be visible, for baby elephants, like their human counterparts, should have chubby cheeks.

  Every keeper will know the history of each orphan in our care, their particular story being key to the understanding of any strange behaviour patterns when they first come to us. It is important to ensure that the orphans are kept as happy as possible during their nursery time, so that they heal psychologically and behave normally by the time they are re-exposed to the natural world. Over the years we have learned a lot about the disturbed psychological state of traumatized orphaned elephant young. Their behaviour often mirrors the post-traumatic stress syndrome of humans. Healing the psychological effects of such stress is imperative, for if an elephant is not psychologically stable, it will risk rejection from the wild herds.

  Thanks to modern technology, we record our orphans’ rescues on film and chronicle their daily progress in the keepers’ diaries, sharing this through the Trust’s website. Every orphan has a harrowing story, most orphaned as a result of human activity of some sort: a mother killed by poachers for her ivory tusks; mothers and babies falling down wells dug in dry sandy riverbeds by pastoral people for their livestock; more frequent drought conditions due to global warming; calves dying from milk deprivation because their mother’s milk is compromised through drought. Some arrive savagely mutilated by brutal people bent on retribution for elephants having destroyed crops. More recently, domestic livestock have illegally invaded the National Parks, introducing stomach parasites and diseases that contribute to the demise of elephants and other wild inhabitants. Furthermore, the general proliferation of the human population is creating mounting competition for both water resources and grazing, and, of course, the loser is always the wildlife.

  Our elephant-keepers rotate between the Nairobi nursery and the two Tsavo rehabilitation facilities at Voi and Ithumba, so that all the elephants know all the keepers, and all the keepers know all the orphans. In this way the elephants understand that separation from a human loved one is just a temporary measure, and that they have not permanently lost another loved one as they did their elephant mother and family. Once psychologically stable and physically healed, usually after a couple of years in the Nairobi nursery, we transfer our orphans to one of our two rehabilitation centres in Tsavo, transporting them in a specially designed ‘elephant mover’, which can comfortably accommodate three nursery elephants at a time. Resting on the substantial chassis, the truck’s body, designed by Robert, has three separate spacious compartments, accessed through a side panel that folds flat against the loading, or unloading, bays so that the animals can walk in, and out. Surrounding these compartments is a corridor, so that the keepers who accompany the elephants can move easily around them to comfort and feed them during the journey.

  Mysteriously, at the other end the ex-orphans who are now living wild anticipate ahead of time the arrival of new nursery elephants. How they know this defies human interpretation, but it happens far too often to be chance. Mobile phone signals are poor in Tsavo’s remote north, and there have been occasions when even the Ithumba keepers have been unaware that the new elephants are on their way, yet the independent ex-orphans are the ‘giveaway’, turning up unexpectedly to wait at the stockade compound for the new arrivals. We can only assume that telepathy is at work, and, even more astoundingly, that such telepathy can only be between the ex-orphans and the Nairobi keepers, since there have been instances when new transferees are not known by those now living wild.

  The reunions that take place are always joyful, involving trumpeting, the intertwining of trunks, urinating and rumbling, with the newcomers always welcomed with a great outpouring of love. During the rehabilitation stage the orphans walk in the bush with their keepers to browse on natural vegetation and enjoy a noon mud bath; they continue browsing through the afternoon and return to the safety of their spacious night stockades in the evening, where cut browse awaits them. Now the keepers no longer actually sleep in with the orphans, but are within earshot should the need arise to investigate any disturbance and calm fearful youngsters. The elephants are housed together in the stockades at the rehabilitation facilities, and instead of being fed three-hourly, receive just three milk feeds each day – morning, noon and evening – with cut vegetation that they can eat during the night.

  To begin with the orphans follow their human keepers when taken out to browse in the bush, but during the rehabilitation stage a change takes place. The orphans now begin to decide themselves where they want to browse each day and make their own plans, through low frequency infrasound, to meet up with the ex-orphans, whom they regard as part of their extended elephant family. It is now that they begin to socialize with their wild kin, introduced by those that have already accomplished the transition. While fraternizing with wild elephants, the keepers simply sit under a tree at a safe distance until such time as the orphans are ready to move on and come and seek them out again.

  The call of the wild is strong. Each orphan answers that call in its own time, dependent upon how well the elephant can remember being part of a wild family. Those orphaned in very early infancy will be too young to recall their previous wild life and tend therefore to remain with the human family longer, but in the fullness of time, every elephant that passes through our nursery ends up leading a perfectly normal wild elephant life among the wild elephant community of the Tsavo National Park. More importantly, at 8,000 square miles, Tsavo is sufficiently large to afford elephants the space they need for a good quality of life in wild terms, for they cover enormous distances – sometimes hundreds and even thousands of miles – in their long-range wanderings to meet up with family and friends and seek out fresh pastures. It is also remarkable that when walking with their keepers out in the bush, our orphans will protect their human family when confronted by a threat. Tsavo’s wilderness remains a hostile environment for an unarmed human on foot, inhabited as it is by fearsome lions with man-eating tendencies, by grumpy old buffalo bulls holed up in thickets, and by aggressive elephants that have no reason to trust or love humans, having been harassed and poached for decades. Yet the keepers know they can rely on the orphans to detect a threat and protect them, crowding around while the more senior orphans chase off any suspected danger. Although elephants are essentially peaceful animals, living in harmony with all other members of the animal kingdom, they are the strongest mammal on earth, and if turned aggressive due to cruelty and harassment, they can be a formidable foe, especially since they, like us humans, can reason, plan and think.

  Older orphans instruct newcomers with gentle patience, teaching them not to touch electric fencing, escorting newcomers out to browse, joining them at their noon mud bath, introducing them to known friendly wild elephant herds they happen to meet in their daily wanderings. It is usual for senior ex-orphan females to select a smaller baby as their ‘chosen’ one. This is a much sought-after privilege, when leader elephants will allow smaller calves to head a column on the way out of the stockades in the morning or to and from the noon mud bath and back again in the evening. Although elephants are born with a genetic memory programmed with elements important to survival, this memory has to be honed by gradual exposure to a wild situation. Our elephants are never just tipped out into a wild situation but are rather just introduced gradually, through access and exposure that can span ten years to enable such natura
l instincts to become honed. As all the orphans who have grown up together regard themselves as family, those that have accomplished the transition to ‘wild’ status like to keep in touch with others that remain keeper-dependent, returning from time to time to keep contact with whoever is still in the stockades, understanding that others like themselves can benefit from elephant reassurance and guidance.

  Frequently stockade-based juniors are selected by a senior to accompany them for a trial ‘night out’ in the wild, but should the novice feel insecure without the protection of their human family, that is understood as well. He or she is escorted back to the stockades and handed over to the keepers again. The fact that elephants never forget has been proved to us time and time again, once by Eleanor in her forties, when she returned to the stockades after many years of wild living and a man who was a stranger to the incumbent keepers happened to be approaching from a distance. Up went Eleanor’s trunk, her ears stood out, and much to everyone’s alarm, she ran at speed towards the stranger, enveloping him with her trunk and treating him to a highly charged elephant greeting. It turned out that he had been her keeper when she was five years old, and even though thirty-seven years had passed since she had seen him last, her recognition was instant.

  Time has also taught us that the ex-orphans now living wild know where to come for help should they ever need it. A number have come back to the stockades over the years with wire snares around a leg, or with arrow and spear wounds inflicted by hostile people, and even to give birth within reach of the human family. Emily and Edie, who were nursery-reared from early infancy, and are now the mothers of wild-born babies, managed to get their babies back when their milk failed during the 2009 drought. In Emily’s case, her calf was so weak that it could barely walk more than a few paces at a time when the keepers happened upon them during the course of one of their routine surveillance patrols. They sent for keeper Mischak, who helped Emily get her calf back to the Voi stockades where we fed her nutritious dairy cubes and other supplements to get her milk flowing again. Edie’s calf was younger but stronger, and she managed to get it back unaided; once the milk flowed again as normal, both calves were saved. Similarly, an orphan named Solango, accompanied by his ex-orphan friend Burra, returned with a seriously damaged back leg, unable to even put it to the ground. Laboriously he managed to get back to the Voi stockades, and for the next four months we treated him with homeopathic healing aids, during which time his friends came to visit him regularly, just as we do an ailing relative in hospital. Elephants are, indeed, just like us, and in many ways, better. It is indeed comforting for those of us who love them to know this in the ele-unfriendly world of today, but knowing elephants so intimately, I also know without any shadow of doubt that not one of them would exchange their wild existence, despite all its hazards, for a safer life incarcerated in captivity.

  Here in Nairobi, the nursery is a hub of activity from dawn to dusk. I am up at first light every morning to inspect each elephant’s nightly feeding record, and from those notes I get early warning of whether or not all is well. Over the years I have learned that any loss of appetite, change in stools or sleep pattern is an early warning of trouble, and that with elephant babies things can go very wrong very rapidly and unexpectedly. I deal with any problems that have arisen overnight, talk to the keepers, seek the help of a vet should I feel it necessary, and make sure we are prepared for the day’s programme. Just before eleven, I hear the wheelbarrows approaching as the keepers bring loads of large bottles of milk through my front yard and carefully place them at separated intervals on the ground. At the same time other keepers erect a cordon around poles in order to segregate the orphans’ mud bath from the line of tourists, locals and schoolchildren, who have already started queuing in order to share the one hour when we are open every day and watch the elephants take their noon milk feed and, weather permitting, a cooling mud bath. As soon as the keepers bring the milk, a palpable sense of excitement sets the crowd talking, the children chattering happily as they wait expectantly for the elephants to appear from the nearby forest. Their patience is rewarded as the nursery elephants come running from forest cover closely followed by their keepers, who always have a hard time keeping up with them.

  Each elephant homes in on its particular spot, knowing exactly which bottle is his or hers. Some hold the bottle themselves, curling their trunk around it and tipping it up until it is drained, downing the contents greedily before waiting for the keeper to hand them another. The visitors are spellbound, because elephants have their own magic attraction for most humans – perhaps because they are so like us. The click and whirr of cameras and videos hangs in the air until another burst of delight erupts as the smallest of the orphans, unable to run as fast as their older peers, are gently steered towards hung blankets so that they can rest the tip of their trunk against something that feels a little like a mother’s body. Standing behind the blanket, a keeper lifts the lower end up to insert the large rubber teat into the little elephant’s mouth once its trunk has found a suitable spot on the blanket. These very young newborns require endless patience in order to get them to take the quantity of milk essential to ensure survival – at least twenty-four pints in twenty-four hours. Anything less means that the elephant will rapidly lose condition and become skeletal within days.

  Once the milk has been consumed, the orphans themselves decide whether or not the day is warm enough to merit a cooling mud bath. If it is, they get down to play in the mud, rolling around, climbing on each other, tossing their trunks in the air, and then running around to play football with the keepers. Baby elephants clearly enjoy an audience, never failing to respond to the buzz in the crowd, kicking the ball with front and back feet and running after it with outspread ears. Often the warthog descendants of the Ever Hopefuls turn up, also hoping for a mud bath, and their appearance always triggers amusing entertainment for the visitors as the little elephants begin to chase them, but only as long as they oblige by running away. Should a mother pig stand her ground, confusion reigns and the elephants back off, terrified. The orphans are scared even of something as small as a dikdik or a dung beetle – indeed one of our orphans trembled all day after a chameleon fell on her back from a tree on which she was browsing.

  If the weather is cool, each of the nursery elephants will need a blanket over its back for warmth, tied beneath the belly by soft, pliable, discarded panty-hose stockings, but as soon as the weather warms up, these blankets are removed. Elephants have no sweat glands, so cannot perspire to adjust body temperature. When it is hot, they seek the shelter of shade, fan their ears, or cool themselves down by means of water. In extreme circumstances, as David discovered all those years ago much to the scientists’ disbelief, with their trunk they can draw on reserves of stomach water to spray behind their ears and over their body. Newborns are also vulnerable to sunburn – in the wild they would shelter from the sun underneath the body of their mother, or conversely be protected from the wind and the rain by being always surrounded by a close-knit family. Visitors are amused to see the keepers rubbing sunblock over delicate and vulnerable baby ears, laughing as they put up umbrellas to shade the newborns from direct sunlight, but both are very necessary to counteract the harmful effects of sunburn.

  But it isn’t just the elephants: over the years we have also been able to share our expertise with others rearing rhino orphans on Kenya’s private ranches, and in this way we have been responsible for saving many rhino calves that would otherwise have been lost. Our visitors are fascinated by the rhinos at the orphanage, especially Maxwell, a fully grown rhino who, although blind from birth, gallops around his stockade at great speed expertly avoiding every obstacle. He lives for the remote contact he enjoys with Solio, an orphan from the ranch that has sheltered Pushmi and Stroppie all these years, and where Reudi grew up to be the breeding bull who sired many of Kenya’s current living rhinos.

  I smile when I think back to the safari on which David and I discussed the prospect of ret
irement. It wasn’t really an option then, and it certainly isn’t an option now, even though I am well past the normal retirement age. I will simply have to drop on the job, and I wouldn’t want it any other way without David by my side. I have lived each day since his death with David in my heart, and when I look at the orphanage and all the work we have managed to do in his name, I know that he would be happy.

  David taught me to respect, love and understand animals, and for me, the words of Henry Beston, an American First World War veteran who sought solace in nature and wrote about his experiences in The Outermost House, best capture David’s essential beliefs: ‘We need another wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of earth.’

  And while I still have much to learn, this much I know: animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature’s fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world’s most emotionally human land mammal.