It's Hard to Be an Elephant Mom
It’s hard to decide what should be the first blog on this, my brand new blog for Animanity in Art. This passion project, turned master’s thesis, turned life path of creating art about and for animal conservation has been a long time coming. I have so much to share. Where to start? So, I decided to start at the beginning.
It’s my relationship with an elephant friend named Jenny, the first elephant friend I ever made, one of two African elephants living at the Dallas Zoo, who set me on this path of making positive and healthy changes for my animal friends, not just in captivity, but also in the wild.
You see, Jenny lost her sister, Moja, very suddenly. Moja was her only remaining relative and her only companion at the zoo. Moja caught a disease called Endomyocardial Disfarction. Basically, the sack around Moja’s heart filled with fluids very quickly, and she passed away one night after showing no symptoms the day before at all. Without telling the whole heart-wrenching story of the day we found Jenny crying and desperately trying to reach her dead sister, I will just say that as a new zookeeper, it was a horrifying experience, for Jenny, but also for all of us who loved her.
She was never the same after that day, and the humans who ran the zoo, the administrators who would not allow her the proper time to grieve because it might slow opening the zoo for business that morning, were a big part of the problem. So, I made a promise to Jenny that day. I promised her I would try to make things better for her and also for all of her elephant relatives, both captive and wild, actually that promised in my mind extended all animals. It’s a promise I intend to keep.
Fast forward twenty years to the start of Animanity in Art, which officially began to create art for conservation in 2015. I was working out how to give back more with my art. I began to look for conservation groups in the wild who were doing good things for animals. I wasn’t sure how I could help, but I was researching ideas. One of the first people I reached out to was Angela Yang, a friend and former coworker from the Dallas Zoo, who was working in Africa’s Masai Mara National Reserve at the time. I had been following her daily behavioral observations and stories from her treks into the park on her Facebook feed. I wanted to know about volunteering in Masai Mara. A bucket list item I intend to make a reality one day.
It just so happened that soon after I reached out to Angela, and simultaneously having just started my first oil painting of an elephant and her calf, Angela tagged several of us on Facebook. She had come across an orphaned elephant who had been attacked by hyenas, was weak and hungry, and needed medical attention immediately. She had called the vet, the other park rangers, and the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (STW) to come rescue the calf, but she was left waiting, trying to keep this elephant calm. It’s not like you can just load an elephant up in your truck and drive off to the vet with it. Even a baby isn’t so tiny. So, we waited, Angela in person, and a whole group of us virtually, with our hearts in our throats.
Photo Courtesy of A Yang
Help arrived fairly quickly, though it didn’t feel that way at the time, and they were able to anesthetize and treat the wounds before loading the baby safely onto a truck to be transported to the air strip and flown to the closest nursery. I watched as Angela kept the baby calm in the back of the truck, speaking softly to him, offering whatever comfort she could give, and I began to follow that baby’s journey.
He was later named Alamaya, which means brave. And he is so brave! This was when I first became aware of the amazing work of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Orphans Project, and their matriarch, Dame Daphne Sheldrick, who founded the first and most successful elephant conservation project in the world, not to mention working on conservation for many other species throughout Africa.
Photo courtesy of Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
Do you know what it takes to feed, shelter and house not just one, but many orphaned elephants? It’s an unimaginable undertaking, but Dame Daphne figured out a working formula. First, she had to figure out a formula for the milk to feed the babies. They are milk dependant for five years. And each wild female only has enough milk to feed one calf, so having another elephant foster mother is not feasible. Dame Daphne got over this hurdle with the first elephant she fostered herself. Through trial and error, with a whole lot of love, heaps of patience and creativity, and assistance from many people, she figured out a system for raising elephants in more natural orphan herds, with a keeper to be the surrogate mother for each baby.
That elephant keeper is there at the first moment each baby is rescued, and agrees to stay with each baby just like a mother, throughout their journey, nursing them back to health, introducing them to the other orphans at the nursery, and eventually taking them back out into the wild when they were strong enough, This way, they can begin to interact with and learn from other wild elephant herds about what it takes to live in the wilds of Africa.
Photo Courtesy of Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
And it worked! Dame Daphne’s project has been amazingly successful. Against all the odds, The STW Orphan Project has successfully raised 262 orphaned elephants, 17 rhinos, a giraffe and several other antelope. Most amazing of all, to date, the female ex-orphans released back to the wild have now successfully raised 37 of their own calves in the wild. This, above all else, is the mark of a truly successful conservation program.
I was also excited to hear that the keepers of the STW nurseries in multiple locations are seeing ex-orphans bringing wild friends and family members from their new herds to the nurseries for help when animals are wounded or sick. The word has spread among the elephant communities that they have friends and helpers they can turn to in times of need. It is truly incredible, and I am proud to say I am still a foster mother to Alamaya to this day. He is alive and healthy and making wild bull elephant friends already. Soon, he will walk off into the wild with his friends for good.
Photo Courtesy of Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
As for me, when I sold that first elephant painting, I used the money to feed Alamaya and three other orphans for an entire year. That was when I knew I had found my calling. That was the moment, October 2015, when Animanity in Art was truly born. Now, I give a portion of the proceeds back to animal conservation in the wild with every single painting I sell.
So, here, on the Animanity blog, I will begin to tell you about some of the conservation projects I support, and also about some of my animal friends who inspire me. I hope you will stop by from time to time and give it a read, and by all means, take the time to follow the links and check out these organizations. Give to them if you can. Better yet, get involved. It’s so rewarding.
If you are interested in an elephant painting, the one at the very top of this blog is still for sale. Scroll to the bottom of this page to get in touch with me for information. Or, Click Here for my commissions page, and fill out the form, so we can chat about what you have in mind.
You have the option with every elephant painting you purchase from me, of choosing which SWT elephant orphan you want to adopt. Then, I will make the adoption in your name, so you can recieve all of the perks that go along with fostering an elephant. Or, by all means, if a painting isn’t what you are looking for, you can just Click Here to adopt your very own orphan!
Below is Alamaya’s rescue video. You will even catch a glimpse of Angela in the beginning while they are loading him into the rescue plane. Note: They were referring to him in this video as a female, because his back end was so ravaged by the hyenas that they could not tell what sex he was. They later realized Alamaya is a male. Feel free to leave me comments and questions or contact me over on Facebook or Instagram. Thanks for stopping by!
