I Tried To Adopt a Baby...

But Eric said no! It’s probably best, I’m not sure if dad would let me keep an elephant in the barn during the winter. I suspect that he’d say no, well at least until he saw how cute it was and then maybe I’d have a chance.

We went to an elephant orphanage today and got to spend an hour or so watching the baby’s eating (which they do every three hours) and playing in the dirt and water. It was amazing and heartbreaking all at the same time. Most of the orphans had mothers that died because of injuries and some were just found wondering by themselves. Amazingly some even fell down man holes (they are waaaaay bigger here)! The youngest one we saw was only three weeks old and had just a few days ago come to the orphanage. It was still quite skinny and recovering from being alone for a day or more with no food or water. I can hardly believe that they can actually survive at this age, if you took a three week old human baby away from it mother and put it in a grassland I bet it would be dead in hours. How these little guys survived is beyond me.

The baby’s who have been there a little longer really like to play with the people and come to rub along as many as possible in the front row. Needless to say, elephant babies are not exactly clean. More than one of us had huge red dirt stains all over us. I tried to convince Nada that she should go roll in the mud to stain her entire pair of capris but she wouldn’t go for it. I can’t understand why, at least the other babies would help her play!

lisa