Riski Business

One of my favourite charities is The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya which rescues orphaned baby elephants (and rhinos) -- most of them made that way by poaching and the renewed ivory trade. (Seriously, who needs ivory for anything?) It's a wonderful operation, profiled twice by 60 Minutes.

Please consider giving a child in your life a sponsorship for Christmas.

Anyway, tonight, while tooling around on the Internet, I came across this. It's not from the Sheldrick Trust, which takes in young elephants fallen in ditches and or wells, or found wailing around their butchered mothers' bodies. Instead, it is a live birth of a baby at the Elephant Safari Park in Bali.

You'll squirm, you'll gasp, you'll cry, you'll clap your hands and cheer.

You don't want to miss this.

Comments

[skdadl]

So moving -- thanks for this, Antonia.

[brebis noire]

A few things I'd like to mention:
-if they'd spread hay or straw on the floor to make it less hard and slippery than concrete, or let her give birth on natural ground, it would've been easier overall (I can't think of anything worse than concrete)
-I'd hate to be the vet deciding whether or not to intervene in elephant dystocia.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

A Chaora Dhubh,

"(I can't think of anything worse than concrete)"

Thanks for noting that! There's actually a group somewhere that's trying to stop elephants being exhibited in zoos at all. And there's an article in one of the earliest issues of the American Conservative about the truly appalling conditions in which, e.g., pigs are kept, with cold concrete playing a major role in their discomfort.

[Corinna A]

It was beautiful but I don't think this video would help me persuade my spouse to be with me in the delivery room.
I think they should have had a mattress or a cushion to catch the baby.