Vet visit & Annual check-up
End of August was one of the closing of the holiday green season and getting fit and ready to enter a new quarter in the year. For this occasion and special period in the calendar, we were lucky to receive a visit from the vet Christopher Stremme, and the Elephant Conservation Center medical team: Anabel and Mouk, for an annual check-up of our elephants. They went for a full screening and got all propped up: deworming, tetanus vaccinations, blood tests, etc, of course not without the little bribery of lots and lots of food.
And guess what, little Boua is not a fan of injections, apparently. She charged at the vet and then tried to avoid him at all cost. What a temper this one….Luckily Mae Ping remained calm and didn’t fall for her daughters drama.
The vet had to wait for a long while with a lot of patience, until she was close enough to finally manage to make the jab.
Unfortunately taking a blood sample was a big no-go for Boua this time, so we will have get her used to having her ears touched and manipulated more often so she gets used to this feeling, in order to collect blood next time without any stress.
This medical visit was also a great opportunity for the team at the Mekong Elephant Park to ask questions and learn more ways of improving access to healthcare for elephants in Laos. The vet from the Lao Conservation Trust for Wildlife was also present and we were able to exchange about their mission to rehabilitate wild animals in Laos.
We express our deepest thanks to all these specialists that visited us and our team and glad to know all our elephants are healthy and set for another year.
Beside the support of our partners and collaborators, it is all thanks to all of our guests and supporters that we can make it until today, to provide sufficient care for our elephants. If you wish also to contribute towards their basic daily life needs and health care, you can help by making a monthly or one shot donation.
Elephant Baci
Baci (meaning “calling of the soul”) is a traditional Laotian ceremony to drive out evil spirits. This centuries-old ceremony is held to commemorate special occasions during one’s lifetime to maintain balance and promote harmony within one’s body.
The ceremony is usually performed with symbolic food offerings line the outer edge of the arrangement, while at the center is a cone-shaped tree made of banana leaf and adorned with flowers. A Buddhist monk chants prayers in the religious Pali language while the other attendees observe in silence. After invoking both Buddhist and animist deities to return spirits back to the body, a white cotton string is tied around the wrist of the honored guests to hold the spirits in place and preserve their good luck. In Laos, the elephant is the only animal that is entitled to the Baci. As this ceremony is usually reserved exclusively for humans, this fact is a proof of the importance of elephants in Laos culture.
At the beginning of summer, all of our elephants received their Baci ceremony. While they are kept busy with food, white cotton strings are attached to the elephants to wish them good luck.
A special thanks to the mahouts, our benefactor Alain Kahn, and everyone who came to witness this very special moment celebrating the beginning of a new life cycle for all our elephants.
The Mekong Elephant Park in Fame
We know you were asking for it so here it is!
Indeed, a lot of our visitors and supporters have asked us to share once again the Mekong Elephant Park’s very own moment of fame, where we were proudly featured on TF1’s Grand Reportage.
In 2019, a journalist came to the Mekong Elephant Park and ended up, for three years, following the story of Wendy and the team’s long battle to save the elephants of Laos, with the invaluable help of the Elephant Conservation Center, before finally arriving at a small miracle: the birth of Boua.
Check out again some moments of the making of this documentary.
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