The most important thing to keep in mind regarding elephant care is: it’s all about input and output. And such a prodigious amount of both! I am sure there are statistics somewhere that state how much an average elephant eats, but from first hand experience I can testify that it’s beyond amazing. The WFF is either fortunately, or by design- and I am not sure which- located in a major banana growing region of Thailand. This is a key point because the complete banana plant, from the stem to the fruit, is consumed by the elephants, or rather, more accurately I should say, passes through elephants.

As a volunteer at the center we are intimately engaged in all of the activities surrounding feeding, entertaining, cleaning, and cleaning up after the resident elephants. The days are long, the work can by physically demanding, but being able to hang out near and interact with the elephants makes it all worthwhile. They are amazing animals!

Banana ball prep. We are squishing up the bananas.

Finished product! Yum.

The day starts early, at 6:30 am, when the teams are deployed to prepare the morning feeding. The elephants eat before we do, of course. The daily teams are assigned the night before and posted on the white board making it easy for you to find your assignment and your team lead. The team leads are volunteers as well, usually those who have worked a few times with a particular group of elephants and knows that routine well. In addition, all of the elephants’ routines are posted on the ubiquitous white boards for those needing reminders. If all else fails, it is possible to communicate with the mahout, the Thai elephant keeper, who is assigned to the team. They have various levels of English capability but even with the least fluent it is possible to make ourselves understood in both directions. (I know this because I have been in that situation already, as a team lead.)

There is a basket of fruit and corn for each elephant waiting in the storage area so the first task is collecting the correct baskets. Wheeled carts are available for transporting the baskets to those habitats that are nearby and a large truck carries the volunteers and their cargo to the more distant sites. My assignments all week have been at the two most remote sites so I have spent plenty of time in the truck bouncing over the back roads of the complex. At the prep site the bananas get separated from the other fruit (pineapple and watermelon) and corn, which get cleaned. Half the bananas are used, along with bran and some special pellets made out of grains, to make banana balls. Making banana balls reminds me of making banana bread, but without the baking. The bananas have to be squished into a semi-liquid state then the bran and the pellets mixed in to create a dough, formed into balls. Since you use your hands to do all the mixing I am anticipating having much stronger wrists and fingers at the end of my work here. The various elephants require different sizes and quantities of banana balls based on their personalities and the dynamics of the herds. For example, we fed a herd of three, but one of them was a very slow eater. As this particular elephant was also meek and easily bullied by the other two, she got three big balls, which we had to make sure that she finished first. The other two got lots of small balls so we could pace how fast they ate. After feeding the elephants and cleaning up we head in for breakfast to feed ourselves.

Feeding time. Generally you hold so they can wrap their trunk around it although for some you place it on the end where their “finger” is. So cool!!!!!

After an hour break for food, we head out again at 9 am to continue our work. The main task involves chopping up the fruit and corn, preparing it for its many uses throughout the day. Chopped fruit is used to manage the elephants when we walk them, shower them and also as the base material for the creation of “wraps, used in enrichments which I will discuss in some detail later. The wraps are basically chopped fruit wrapped in banana stalk. It turns out the banana plant is incredibly useful and entirely edible for elephants,from the stem to the fruit. The trunk, or stem, can be used in several different ways. It can be chopped into shoe box size pieces and fed directly to the animals, it can be peeled into thin half-cylinder stalks used for the wraps, and the larger stalks can be further divided to create, when dried, a sort of string used to fasten the wraps. Hence a “wrap” is a wonderful elephant snack.

While getting the fruit completely chopped and creating the enrichments, due at the end of the day, are important tasks, other tasks require attention throughout the day, based on requirements of each elephant’s schedules. For example, at different times during the day different elephants take walks, whether from one habitat to another, or simply in the case of the oldest resident, a simple stroll down the lane and back. In addition, many of the elephants get showers, some with accompanying scrubbing via a long handled brush. Like dogs, some enjoy it, while others tolerate it for the food, but for all the showers provide some variety to their day.

A peeled banana tree.

But barring those interruptions, enrichment production keeps volunteers busy. The idea behind enrichments is to find a way to deliver food that challenges the elephants to work a little bit. Usually it is only a little bit as what is considered a “good” enrichment is one that lasts more than a few minutes. The power and cleverness of these animals is amazing! I have watched several destroy the most complex enrichment in mere seconds. I have not yet learned all of the standard enrichment designs, but I have learned a few. The wraps, once assembled, can be stuffed inside of large tires, then lined with hay and wrapped tightly with a rope or a wrap. Given enough tires and rope, two tires can even be bound together. Two wraps can be tied together, again with a banana string, and thrown at tree branches to hang as high as possible. Finally, in a time or resource pinch, the wraps can be distributed randomly in the underbrush of the habitats, forcing the elephants to search for them.

The wrap assembly line.

Enrichments can also be made using the chopped fruit and corn directly, without the use of wraps. The chopped food can be stuffed directly inside the rim of a bicycle tire, cut open for that purpose. The tire, once stuffed, no easy task by the way, can then be covered with hay, wrapped in banana stalk and tied with rope or netting. These “star cells” can either be hidden in the underbrush or hung high on poles or trees. Another enrichment, a fruit log, is made from a complete banana plant. The banana stem can be carved out, as if carving a canoe, stuffed with fruit, covered over with a layer of stalk and tied shut. Two small bicycle tires, wrapped around the outside and secured with rope or netting, creates a fruit log with a small obstacle. The more layers or complexity to the enrichment, the better, although it seems we are always limited by available resources. Every day the elephants get the enrichments, and every day they destroy them and scatter them about. It sometimes takes a while to find the remnants and see what is re-usable and what is not.

Besides working on the “input” part of the equation- preparing and delivering food in various forms and methods, we also have to deal with the “output” side, spending time each day cleaning out the habitats. There is a lot of detrious, from the various pieces of banana plants to the stalks and leaves of elephant grass, also used as elephant food, laying about as well as massive quantities of elephant poo. Both are collected and used as compost- gloves recommended but not required! Elephants apparently do not have very efficient digestive systems, only absorbing about 40% of what they eat, so we see a lot of things twice…

It is a bit like groundhog day in that we get up every morning, prepare food and then collect the remnants. But during the process we get to interact closely with the elephants and work near them with the opportunity to observe their different personalities. We do rotate from habitat to habitat and thus our exact daily routines vary from place to place.

Going for a walk. Totally fun to “walk an elephant”. Not as easy as a dog on a leash.

Because elephants require a lot of food and the banana plant is so incredibly useful we go through a lot of trees in a short time. Consequently there is a banana tree harvest every other day to keep an adequate supply in stock. The WWF has agreements with local banana growers to come clear out plants that have already yielded fruit. The center clears out the old plant and hauls it off, providing the opportunity for the new plant to sprout from the remnant and produce more bananas- thus everyone is happy. Harvest starts after breakfast and continues until the truck is full, usually around lunch time. The maximum number of volunteers possible are scheduled, keeping enough back to manage the normal work load and also trying not to burden any individual with several consecutive harvest assignments. I was scheduled this week for the first time and it was fortunate that we had 15 people, the ideal size. It is hard physical work, usually hot, and always challenging. The mahouts, using machetes, chop down the plant and cut off the top. The volunteers then come in and pick the plant up and transport it to the truck. The truck may be close by or it may be across a field full of hills and troughs filled with mud that are hidden by banana leaves. The best way to carry a banana tree is by balancing it on your shoulder. It is possible for one person to carry a whole plant if the center of mass is managed correctly. After a rain the plant is heavy because of the absorbed water, though, and likely two people are required. No matter what the weather, however, the footing is tricky. At the truck two mahouts load up the plants and we all look eagerly to see how much it has been filled. If nothing else it is a great workout!

At the end of the day, enrichments complete, banana trees chopped up, another round of banana balls ready to go, is the final feeding. The elephants get the banana balls first, the chopped up banana pant is thrown into the habitats and the enrichments distributed according to the requirements of the individual elephants. After a final clean up of the work sites we head back to the housing complex, arriving around 5 pm, with time to clean up before dinner at 6 pm. One day a week we can take off. Today is my day off so I had time to catch up on my blog. I’ll write more about the individual elephants as I work with them. This week I have been hanging out with the same five so I could be trained as a team lead on their schedules.

Some elephants go for a daily swim, others….

….get a daily shower.