Best Last-Minute Valentine’s Present—Adorable Baby Elephant
Isn’t helping this guy a perfect way to say, “I love you and I’m a good person!” (Photo: Jo Piazza)
Haven’t found the perfect gift for Valentine’s Day yet? Is your special someone so over chocolate (sugar is the devil you know) and morally against diamonds (it is an ethical dilemma).
How about thinking outside of the box this V-Day and getting your sweetheart a baby elephant. You heard me right…a baby elephant.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: Where will we keep it? They get quite large don’t they? Can I afford to feed a baby elephant?
Forget your worries, or Hakuna Matata as they actually say in Swahili, and not just in the Lion King. You can adopt an adorable baby elephant from the David Sheldrick Elephant orphanage in Nairobi, let the elephant experts take care of him or her for you, and still have all the joy of knowing you’re making the world a better place.
The New York Times ran an excellent video in favor of Valentine’s baby elephant adoption earlier this month.
The great thing is that fostering an elephant from the David Sheldrick Orphanage couldn’t be easier. It’s actually way easier than ordering flowers online and they don’t try to upsell you nearly as much.
The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is one of the most successful elephant rescue and rehab centers in the world and they have successful hand-raised more than 150 infant elephants and then reintroduced them into the wild.
You can select your elephant baby on their website here and pay the $50 annual fee by credit card. Fostering entitles you to a water color print of your elephant and monthly updates about your elephant’s progress. You receive a direct link to the keeper’s diary about your elephant with “daily calendar entries and the monthly photos.”
Is there anything cuter than baby elephant bath time at the orphanage? The answer is no. (Photo: Jo Piazza)
Overachievers that we are, my husband and I chose to select our elephant in person while visiting Nairobi en route to a Kilimanjaro climb with Intrepid Travel and a safari with the Rekero Camp and the Naboisho Conservancy in the Maasai Mara.
Elephant foster parents (and potential parents) are allowed special visiting hours at the orphanage, from 5-6, which is when the baby elephants march in from a day spent in Nairobi National Park to have their bottles and go to bed.
As I walked near one of the pens where the baby elephants sleep, I felt something graze her arm. I jumped a little, before realizing it was a baby elephant trunk. A 2-year old orphan had reached out to hold my hand.
This is Mwashoti! He’s a messy eater(Photo: Nick Aster)
On Valentine’s Day last year, the Sheldrick orphanage was alerted to a year-old elephant struggling to survive an infected wound after being caught in a poacher’s snare. The wound went all the way through the joint, compromising the survival of the baby in the orphanage.
Because his mother was still alive, and by his side, rescuers attempted to treat the wound and leave him with his family.
“Our anti poaching teams monitored their movements throughout this time checking on his progress, but as the weeks passed it became apparent that his condition was deteriorating. His mother was forced to drop out from their herd, unable to walk any distance in search of food, and the two of them cut a lonely sight as she remained by the side of her ailing calf, who was becoming increasingly more immobile with each new day,” the Sheldrick report on Mwashoti explains.
“His mother was struggling too, her condition was deteriorating as a result of being forced to remain close to water with little food available, inhibited because of her stricken calf.”
The difficult decision was made to take Mwashoti out of the wild and into the elephant nursery in Nairobi to fully rehabilitate him.
“On arrival at the Nursery he was placed in a stockade next to another orphan called Sirimon, and given a bottle of milk which he was reluctant to take at first,” the orphanage says. “Fresh greens were placed in his stockade and a keeper was on duty with him throughout the night. By next morning he was already passionate about his milk bottle, and sucking the keeper’s fingers. He is an extremely loving little calf, and despite what humans have inflicted on him, all but severing his leg and robbing him of his mother in an effort to save his life, it was as if he understood the situation and made things easier for us.”
