8/30/2005: Elephant truck (breaks down)

Suggested by Clodfobble and then covered by WaPo. This elephant is being loaded onto a trailer in Kenya so that it can be moved from an overcrowded nature reserve to another, less crowded national part. This was part of a move of 400 elephants. Unforunately it made the news because of what happened next: the trailer failed, unable to carry the weight.



full story

Jiminey Christmas. That's why I don't live over in Kenya. Everytime you turn around, there's another elephant catastrophy.

A $3.2 million endeavor, yet they didn't check the weight capacity of the trailer or the truck before loading a sedated elephant onto it.

Seems that ya might want to know that kind of stuff beforehand - I'm sure it's just me.

It's called geographical stupidity unofficially.
Would we Americans have thought of that? Sure we would. If we didn't we'd blame it on some opposing political group.

All hell will probably break loose when Leah sees this IOtD.

Looks like a halfassed operation to me.
It seems for $3.2 million they could have left a 400 mile trail of peanuts.

...or took the 3.2 mil and took care of them where they were at. Of course I don't know what it costs to take care of an elephant per diem.

Send me one & I 'll check it out. Might be cheaper than my grandkids....

My god that poor elephant. They would had to have pump him up with more tranquilizers to keep him calm and especially from killing all in sight. If you want to see a new born baby elephant log onto elephantnaturepark.org and select news (left hand side) then baby born at park. This was the park that I was a volunteer at in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I just missed the mother being rescued and the baby elephant being born, bummer. Can't wait to get back and play with the baby.

http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/

My concern would be for the health of the elephant. Given their weight, they will sometimes suffocate from the pressure on their lungs if they lay down too long ... it's one of the things that makes surgery on them quite dangerous.