Talk about being literally stuck in the mud. Richard Gardiner‚ 20‚ from East London uploaded a video of a baby elephant that got stuck in the mud for a couple of hours in the Addo Elephant Park on January 6 before it was rescued by park rangers.
“We had heard the elephants almost the whole day. They had been making a huge noise.”
The herd grew distressed when they could not free the baby elephant. It is unclear how the elephant got stuck in the mud.
Gardiner and his family were visiting Addo and lodging at the main camp. They walked to a nearby lookout point at around 2pm to view the watering hole when they heard the commotion of about 20 elephants.
He said they were at the enclosure for about an hour before the park rangers arrived. In the video you can see three park rangers approach with a bakkie and chase the herd away before they try to free the elephant. The other elephants intermittently tried to return to the baby elephant‚ but the park rangers kept them at bay.
“We were surprised at how brave they were to go in there. They seemed to be pretty confident that they’ll just be able to chase them (the elephants) away.”
After several attempts at loosening the mud with shovels around the elephant‚ it managed to escape. The group inside the lookout point applauded as the baby elephant galloped back to rejoin the herd.
Gardiner said he had never seen anything like it during his several visits to Addo.
“We were pretty amazed to see that.”
- TimesLIVE
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