Did You Know That Even Non-Famous Geckos Make Noise? Well, They Do.

My morning task, along with two other volunteers, was to water the plants around the enclosure. Simple enough, right? I do this at home. I have a wonderful garden and I water the plants all the time. Nope. Here are three buckets. There is the pond. The pond is within the enclosure and the plants that need tending surround it. There is no irrigation system. WE are the irrigation system. It’s brutally hot and it’s 8:30am. Done. I have a new appreciation for my 100 foot hoses and hose connectors at home.
My 10:00am task to ‘shift poo’ at one of the fields was put on hold since the truck got stuck in the mud. So many questions… There are bins of elephant poo used for compost and the paper factory. This needs to be transported and broken down for use. We got the truck out and moving again and returned to the village. Too risky to keep going if it’s muddy. We were a group of five volunteers and a coordinator. Too many people to go missing, so we went back.
The elephants had a nice walk today. Certainly not as long as yesterday, but they’re happy to get off the chains for any amount of time. The walk ended at the enclosure and there’s alway sugar cane and swimming for any elephant that wants it. And what elephant wouldn’t.

What Time Does The Cock Crow? 3:30am… Ugh

I fed one of the babies today. This little guy was taken from his mother when he was about a year old. Babies will stay on mother’s milk for about three years. As a result he is malnourished. The owner can’t care for him properly and has agreed to let the Surin Project give him free food and care. He gets four bottles of rice mush with milk powder every morning. Have you ever seen anything so adorable?!

It was a quick trip out to the sugar cane field to cut today’s food for the elephants. The mahouts came with us and brought their machetes. We let them cut the sugar cane…they seemed to know what they were doing. 🙂 Within minutes they had cut enough food to fill the truck. That’s where we came in. Load the truck.
Today is a long day for the elephants off their chains. We do a 5-6 mile walk with the elephants that ends in a swim… for everybody. This was incredible. The elephants LOVE the water and when we go in with them we can bath them. Basically, we give the elephants a good scrub with our hands. An elephant massage, really. After the long walk we were all enjoying the river.

Finally, before dinner we hit the local market. They sell EVERYTHING! From fruit and vegetables to donuts and pig’s heads, clothes to tools. Feeling a bit parched, I ordered a soda. It was given to me in a bag with a straw. Not the can or bottle in a bag, mind you. No. The gentleman opened the bottle and poured it over ice into the bag and put a straw in it. I browsed around, not looking for anything in particular as I sipped my bag of soda.