Yesterday was my birthday and I thought what could be a better way of celebrating than spending the day with a bunch of elephants. So, I took a one hour ride out to Elephant Rescue Park which was an incredible experience.

First you get to feed each elephant bunches of bananas, after hearing information about the different species of elephants, elephant facts, and how to feed and elephant without possibly losing an arm if the elephant grabs your hand/arm rather than your banana. To do that you hold out your banana parallel to the ground by on end as you walk in front of the elephahants. The elephant can easily grab the banana with it’s trunk without grabbing your hand/arm too. And so, the elephant is fed, and you are still able to tie your shoes. Win-win.  The main thing I noticed when doing this is that elephant trunks are very soft on the underside, which I hadn’t expected, and they REALLY like bananas – they eat them like popcorn. The rest of their skin is rough with stiff hairs.

After that, we walked with the elephants up a hill and then down to a watering hole. The first watering hole is a pee/poo party as part of getting wet, so the elephants took care of business and then climbed out of the ravine, walked a little further and then sauntered down a ramp to the “real” elephant bath portion of their morning. Here, any of us who wanted could go in the water and scrub them (hard) and get squirted by water from their trunks, and at least in my case, get stepped on by a baby elephant (thankfully she was nearly floating at the time, so in addition to my hands I also still have both feet.

The elephants are quite lovely and seem happy, although the 2 youngest were trained by the circus to never stand still, so they sway and swing their trunks back and forth, which reminded me of some animals that pace in a particular way at the zoo, but at least when they decide to stop on their own, they won’t be punished like they were previously.

The sanctuary rescues circus and logging elephants, and at one point got an injured one that had stepped on sharp metal while hauling logs. They tried to save her, but she died despite the medical treatment and is buried on the property.

Overall, I highly recommend going to Elephant Rescue Park or any of the other no-ride, elephant sanctuaries. Your visit helps provide food for the elephants (they eat 10% of their body weight each day), as well as medical care and enrichment.

And there’s just something hard to describe that you feel when an elephant looks you in the eye from mere inches away.

And now, off to see the lion and tigers. . . .