I had gone ahead that morning with the crew to set up camp in Eduimet, West Kilimanjaro while Chris was driving in with the guests and planning to arrive after lunch. Those last few hours are always busy and I was running around doing the final bits and pieces in camp.
A lot of Maasai that come to the camp to watch the happenings, ask for water and sometimes to ask for odd jobs. As one of them was watching me run around he said, “Hey mamma, you know there is an elephant baby elephant stuck in the well.” I asked him what he meant and he said, “Yes, there is a baby elephant stuck in the well.” As busy as I was at that moment, I knew we now had to go have a look, so I drove with him and my daughter Willow to one of the nearby wells that the Maasai have dug to water their cattle.
It was chaos on arrival, lots of Maasai waiting around to water their livestock. Sure enough, there was the elephant. While it was a baby, it wasn’t a tiny baby, but quite a big baby of 2 or 3 years old. Apparently, the Maasai had chased the mother away in the process. The mother had been there trying to help her baby until a couple hours ago. Luckily this baby could stand in the water, but it was absolutely panicking. I called the rangers in the meantime who said they were on the way, however, their car had broken down. They asked that I start the process while they were en route. I agreed, but I had never rescued a baby elephant or any kind of elephant before. I went to find a rope and figure out what to do next. I also called Chris who got in touch with the Big Life guys on the Kenyan side. They also agreed to come help, but were roughly 60 km away from the Tanzanian border. It would be a while before they could get to us.
I went back to camp where the only rope long enough was the one currently being used for the staff shower. We took that down and I got a couple of our mobile crew to come back with me. There was now a guide from another camp with the elephant and he was telling his safari guests that they could go down to pet this baby. This is, of course, not a good idea. First, it is incredibly stressful for this wild elephant, second, we don’t know where the equally stressed and protective mother is and three, this is actually a big baby making it a pretty dangerous situation all around. I asked him nicely to tell his guests to get back in the car and I also asked all of the Maasai to move away with their livestock. Luckily, the Maasai were very agreeable as they understood the potential danger of the situation.
The guide from the other camp was quite arrogant and didn’t like that I was trying to take control of the situation. He continued to speak quite aggressively to me. I let him know that we didn’t have time for this and that we needed to get the elephant out before it got too tired and the mother moved too far away. He, in the meantime, had made a loop in the rope and somehow managed to get it around the elephant’s neck and then he told me we just needed to pull. I explained to him that we can’t just pull it because would strangle the elephant. He had also folded one of the elephant’s ears in the rope which was really tight and it was clear that the elephant was in a lot of pain. He spoke to my crew and said, “Don’t listen to her, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. You just tie it on and it pull out with the car.” In return I said, “Listen, no one is pulling the elephant like this, you’re going to kill this elephant.”
I turned to his guests and said again, “This is a very dangerous situation. If I was you, I’d get back in the vehicle. We don’t know where the mother is, we don’t know what’s going to happen and this is a big baby elephant.” The guests eventually moved back to their vehicle after taking lots of pictures and videos. I knew that we now needed to get the rope off the baby’s neck which made this even more difficult of a situation. I made my way down to where the baby was with a couple of my crew who now thought I was crazy.
It was the most incredible thing because when I got down in the well and was close to the elephant, my daughter Willow knew to stay in the car and was so calm the whole time.
As soon as I start talking to the elephant I could tell he was listening to me and his focus was only on me; even though this other guide was still shouting at me, being rude and making comments. I managed to loosen the rope and get it off his head. His focus remained on me and he was trying to smell me. By the time I got the rope off, the rangers arrived. I was relieved that they could now help me. They said, “You look like you’ve got this under control, why don’t you keep going.”
The head ranger at that time was a woman and this guide again started speaking badly about me, this time to her. She said to him, “Look, Hannah is going to take control of the situation, you listen to her.” After that he was much more cooperative. I then asked that only the people that were helping should stay down here and everybody else needs to back away.
We now made the loop in the rope really big, and William from my crew got a stick. I continued talking to the elephant who was now really interested in me and very calm. He was no longer flailing around and he wanted to smell my hand. I lifted my hand higher as he continued trying to smell. He then also lifted his leg, so William used that opportunity to put the rope loop over his head and under one leg. This was our opportunity to try to get this baby out of the well.
I moved the car around to the other side, tied the rope onto the the tow bar and pulled the elephant out. As soon as the elephant came out, William cut the rope freeing the baby. To our amazement, when he came out of the rope, he stood up and went running straight at the other guide that had been shouting the whole time. The guide panicked and ran and jumped into his car. The elephant then found the tracks of his mother straight away and started following them while trumpeting. The problem was with so many cars, livestock and people, he eventually lost the tracks.
Never having recused an elephant before, I didn’t actually consider how difficult it would be for the baby to find its mother. I said to the rangers, “You stay with the baby while I go and try to find its mother.” At this point I had eight Maasai, my two crew and my daughter Willow in my car. We were driving for quite some time trying to stay with the tracks but as the area is quite dusty it was challenging. We finally came across a breeding herd of three mothers. Each of them had a baby or two with the exception of one. She didn’t have a baby, but she was big enough to have a baby. We thought that maybe this was the mother.
I called the rangers to let them know that we had possibly found the mother but it was so hard to get the breeding herd or the baby to head in the right direction and we still had no idea if it was going to be the right mother or not. In the meantime, while communicating with me, the rangers were using their car to herd the baby toward us as it had previously been heading the wrong direction. We were so worried that the baby would become too tired to catch up or it wouldn’t be the correct breeding herd.
All of a sudden, without hearing the ranger car or seeing the ranger car or the baby, the mother just started running in the opposite direction. As she did this, the whole herd began running behind her with their heads, trunks and tails all up. Running with a purpose!
Suddenly out of the bushes came the baby. He too started running and collided with his mama. She wrapped her trunk around him and immediately he started nesting. The whole family came around, each rubbing rubbing their trunks around him and greeting him. All the while the mother was picking up dust in her trunk and spraying it in the air. It was the most happy reunion and incredibly emotional for us all. I was crying. Willow, my crew and the Maasai in my car were all clapping exuberantly. It was a very big reunion. The herd moved into the shade of a big tree with a big thicket underneath. As the mother took the baby, she turned around one last time and looked towards us.
I’ve never interacted with an elephant close up like this. Not in the wild, nor at an elephant orphanage. Looking back, I don’t think we can even begin to understand an elephant’s intelligence; the way the baby responded to me and the way the mother and the breeding herd received the baby. It was so loving and intimate.
Later that day, one of the rangers from the Kenyan side came over and reiterated how good of an outcome we had. Unfortunately, they don’t have a lot of resources or time to spend looking for a mother who has been separated from its young. In many cases when they find a baby elephant it gets taken to an orphanage to be raised. Our outcome really was the best case scenario.
