She was asleep in the raucous environs of the rehabilitation centre. It was the third day — January 24 — after she was brought to the centre at Kottoor, near Thiruvananthapuram.
She was sleeping while being reclined, a rarely seen posture among elephants in the woods. Amena’s sensitive ears captured our footsteps and in a jiffy, she reverted to the normal vertical posture and looked at us menacingly.
Insecurity and fear reflected in her eyes for a while, and soon, she could make out the presence of the mahouts who had attended to her in the past two days. And she slowly reached out to the grille, poking her trunk through the iron bars and started suckling the lactogen concentrate from the huge milk bottle offered by her mahout-designate.
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Three days ago, she was untiringly guarding her mother’s carcass on a rubber plantation contiguous to the forests fringes of the Palode range in the Thiruvananthapuram Forest Division and persistently thwarting the team of veterenarians, forest personnel and watchers who had assembled there for her rescue. Finally, Amena was to be trapped in a net, tethered and administered mild dozes of xylazine to restrain her and make her docile for easy transportation.
Immediately on getting administered with the sedative, the hapless calf ran to her mother’s carcass grappling her teats, a heart-rending scene. Only after her immobilisation could the team go near the carcass of the mother, who was electrocuted with a live electric wire trap when she strayed into the private plantation. She is the latest victim of the unending human-animal conflict in Kerala.
Amena was bought to the rehabilitation centre by the Rapid Response Team of the Kerala Forest Department by evening. Her wild ferocity came to the fore when she suddenly started charging at the second mahout who entered the cage for cleaning, trying to pin him to the wall and head-butt him as is the wont in the wild. She was soon disengaged by another mahout.
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“The agonising memories of her mother’s gruesome death might be haunting her at times, it seems,” the forest veterinary surgeon said.
Amena started drinking directly from the bucket and eating grass, though her palate was more tuned to leaves of reeds. It was a sight to watch, she beating the tufts of grass against her front toes as if to get rid of soil and insects, a typical gesture of wild elephants. She was also being given food supplements.
After an initial quarantine for 15 days, Amena, now a year-and-a-half old, was allowed to befriend her fellow mates at the centre and acclimatise with the other five elephant calves — some of them had reached the centre after being swept away from the forests in monsoon floods and others ostracised by their herds. Young ones with genetic deformities are unlikely to survive the stiff competition and may lose the war for the “survival of the fittest” in the wild.
In the coming days, Amena will become an obedient elephant in the camp, a far cry from the thick jungles and a life of gay abandon.
(The writer is the Wildlife Warden of Thiruvananthapuram)
jraniattingal@gmail.com