A mother elephant and her two calves were lucky enough to escape alive, after they all got stuck a muddy hole in Kenya. Thankfully, a small group of people lead by Dr Kieran Avery, joined their efforts and after two hours, they managed to save the family of elephants.
Apparently, the youngest calf has initially fell into the mud, with its older brother and its mother desperately trying to drag it out. However, their efforts were in vain as they also sunk into the muddy pool in their attempts to free the unlucky calf. The struggling elephants have been noticed by some locals who rushed to ask for help.
When locals from Isiolo County alerted him, Kieran Avery – a 34-year-old vet surgeon and wildlife conservationist – immediately rushed at the scene to help the poor animals out. Dr Kieran has an experience with these kind of dramatic rescues, after he saved another elephant stuck in mud, less than a month ago.
“We suspect that the mum or one of the youngsters fell in first,” Dr Kieran told MailOnline. “Then the others went in to see if they could help because they are so loyal to each other but ended up getting stuck as well.”
Since there were not one, but three elephants sunk in the mud, the rescuers were left with little options. Dr Kieran initially thought they may get them out one at the time, but that would have been too dangerous for the one that would remained the last one. So they joined their efforts to drag them all at the same time. Fortunately, they eventually managed to free them all! Though they were all exhausted, no one was harmed.
“Luckily, none were injured – they were all just exhausted,” Dr Kieran said. “It required a big effort to move them all at the same time because you can’t move one at a time, the others will grab you. We had to be very coordinated and very efficient.”
Dr Kieren declared himself extremely satisfied for both the way the rescue went, as well as the way the local community responded to this situation.
“All in all, a really successful mission,” he said. “One thing to really emphasise is the team effort side of this. It is really positive that the communities who own the elephants report when they are stuck like this rather than just putting them down. Really shows the promise of community conservation here in Kenya.”
h.t: MailOnline