I’ve never been so close to those amazingly gigantic creatures, so close that I could feel their snuffling. Elephant trunks are like huge pipes, but more flexible and powerful. Muscles in their trunks make it easier for them to twirl and tear the leaves on the banana trees at once before chewing. Those pipes can also be used to storage water as they always put their trunks inside their mouths after sucking water that could fill out half of their trunks.
Elephants are forever eating, especially those who are pregnant. During my stay in Mr.Sui’s (which means beautiful) host family while at the Elephant Village Exprience project, I was able to take care of Bank, who was pregnant and ready to give birth within a month. She was the one whom I spent most of my time with, and I remember that Jannie (one of my friend who came from Chicago) had once said: “Alexis, you have a weird relationship with Bank.” She said that because Bank was very emotionally instable because of pregnancy and would sometimes hit other volunteers using her strong trunk. Though I took leave to doubt that comment, I felt Bank had indeed shown kind to me because I always look straight to her eyes and petted her trunk smoothly.
I can still remember the weird feeling that I had once I saw Banks’ poo floating towards me when I was helping scrub her body in the river, and the hard feeling that aroused when I was managing to climb up her body in the river. Those experiences are so fantastic that I will never forget, because to be honest, the only experience I had with the elephants was at the age of 4, when I sat on an elephant’s trunk in the zoo.
