My Little Elephant

Today my hands turned blue, to match my uniform. For three days I have been dressed in an oversized pair of indigo fisherman's trousers and a tent of a top. Similar to a thai prison uniform, but in fact the attire of a mahout (elephant trainer). I've been in my idea of heaven at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre. The place where you go to pretend you've got your own elephant.

My Graduation!

I have learnt just enough Thai language and bonded just well enough with Wanali (my baby) to be able to boss her about (Sit Up! Lie Down!), jump on and off, and feed her back-breaking bundles of sugar-cane. I can do this in the training ring, in the lake, or in front of hundreds of flashbulb toting tourists. There are no limits to what me and my elephant can do.

Bath-Time

This morning, she is very clean, as i have bathed her three times in a bracing lagoon of greenish poo-tinged water. I'm telling you, there's nothing my elephant loves more than a nice cold dunk. Oh yes, first i tickle her ears and go 'bye bye' which means 'go-go' and she wades in. Then i pull her ears and say 'tag leung' which means 'bow down' and her head (which i am sitting on) disappears right under the water. Then i get her to sit down, lie down, and all the time i'm dancing on top, trying my best not to fall in or slip off. The whole exercise culminates in a huge waterfight where all the elephants fill up their trunks and blow their noses all over each other. Needless to say, my efforts to stay dry were not always entirely successful, hence my blue hands. I've been freezing all morning.

Water Fight

Or perhaps it's the royal blue, as Wanali is owned by a Thai Princess. I was not always so well connected to the echelons of elephant royalty. My first elephant, Hantawan (sunflower) was a towering, tired, unmotivated 45 year old. She reminded me of Treebeard, from Lord of the Rings, and would grunt and sigh, she was slow and Entish. On the morning of day two, she sat down and refused to budge and ignored everyone. It turned out she had severe indigestion. I'm not surprised, looking at the distance food has to travel! It worked out well for us both though. Hantawan got the day off, and I received Wanali, my swifter, spritelier steed.

Oh, she is cute. Aged 7 years, she is compact, earnest and spiky. The little ones have hair almost all over. It's like sitting on needles, but you get used to it. She is a bright spark, too. I could tell from the moment we met that i needed to win her respect, so I tipped a whole kilo of sunflower seeds down her trunk and after that we were great friends. Elephants do love to eat. They cane about 150kg of food every day, and 100litres of water, and out comes 150kg of paper. Well, not exactly, there are a few more steps in the process. They clean it first, then add fabric conditioner, and then swish it around in water. When it settles onto the wire mesh beneath, they put it in the sun to dry, and each sheet of paper sells for 75baht (a quid). Each and every time an elephant takes a dump, it makes about 10 sheets of paper, so it's well worth paying people to go around cleaning up after them.

What a pile of poo

Wanali is not a morning elephant. After i'd walked about an hour to go and collect her from the forest I was expecting a warm and loving welcome, especially since i'd carried a 6ft trunk of sugar-cane all the way. But she was tempestuous. She wouldn't help us get the chains over her neck (well, why would she?), wouldn't lie down so we could brush the mud off (she had obviously spent many hours carefully powdering herself up) and then did exactly the opposite of everything I asked her to do. If I said go faster, she would go as slow as a tortoise. If I asked her to slow down, she would attempt to win the speed-walking championships. She wouldn't go in a straight line, no way. We were veering all over the track, Wanali looking whichever way she pleased, snatching at trees and branches and trumpeting at all her friends. It was all very unsettling at 6 o'clock in the morning when I would normally be all cosy in bed. But after she'd had her first bathe of the morning, well, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, she was ready to do anything for me!

After a bit of walking forwards, backwards and sideways we were on to the clever stuff. If I dropped something and said 'Geb Bone' she would pick it up and hand it to me, still perched on top of her head. I could get her to trundle over to the hosepipe and turn it on, off, and spray water at one of the other elephants through her trunk. Ha Ha! In the elephant show, Wanali was also the bell-ringer and flag-raiser, so we practised that for a while. Her top trick was to tiptoe onto a log and then do a u-turn around on it without falling off. Well, that's something even I can't do! Elephants have excellent poise and balance.

Ding-Dong

While Wanali had a rest and (another) bath, i went to see what the two babies were up to. The pair of them are kept in neighbouring pens with their mothers. These little dudes are very entertaining. Each one keeps a football in his pen to practise dribbling, and they are not impressed if you try and get it off them. One of their favourite games was to stick their little trunks into a big barrel of water and blow bubbles like naughty children with a big straw. At about 6months old, they were just beginning to learn how to control their trunks and it was my job to assist by pouring water from a bottle into the nose and then attempting to get the nose in the mouth to drink. Well! Mae was more interested in getting her snot all over my nice blue outfit and trying to climb out of her pen.

This one's got a drinking problem

Obviously I'm a bit of an elephant nut, and this has been one of the highlights of my life. For about 4,500GBP I could actually buy my own Elephant and have it looked after by the camp. I'm tempted.