Waterloo woman won’t forget elephant trip
Limping elephants love yoga balls. Who knew?
“We tossed the ball in there just for the sake of it and she went crazy for it,” said Waterloo’s Danielle DeVisser, recalling a moment from her recent three-week trip to the Elephant Nature Park in Northern Thailand.
“She ran around kicking it, passing it back and forth between us. She absolutely loved it.”
Her name is Kabu, short for Kham Boon or “Golden Merit” in Thai.
Her mom was a logging elephant. When Kabu was little, a log rolled out of control and crushed her front left wrist. It healed badly. Her right leg had to carry her weight and also buckled over time.
But, at age 27, Kabu moves well among the 70 elephants living at the animal rescue park on the outskirts of Chiang Mai.
“If you look at her walking around on this deformed leg, you’d think she was the last elephant that would want to play with a ball,” said the 21-year-old DeVisser, now in her first year of veterinary technology and wildlife rehabilitation studies at Northern College in Haileybury, Ont.
“That was really, really awesome.”
The Waterloo Collegiate grad, who aims to land some kind of career working with wildlife, spent two-weeks feeding the elephants and helping care for the other residents, like water buffalo and horses, of the elephant park.
She left in mid-July and returned to Canada in early August.
Volunteering with the Loop Abroad program was something she had been eyeing for a few years after seeing an ad in social media. It cost her about $7,000, including flights, for her Loop Abroad elephant experience, working with veterinarians and other volunteers.
DeVisser got to know some elephants she’ll never forget.
Kabu was one. Another was called Yai-Bua. She is the oldest elephant at the park at more than 100 years old. Yai-Bua, which means “Grandmother, Sacred Lotus” in Thai, worked in a trekking camp, giving rides to tourists, when she was younger.
She earned her elephant camp retirement.
She doesn’t care for yoga balls. She just likes to wander. “Any time she wanted to walk over to the river, she’d choose not to go on the path,” DeVisser said. “She’d choose to go through the muddy field and through the creek.”
And that means DeVisser, her human escort, had to tag along with her.
“By the end of the day, my legs were absolutely covered in mud. I cannot tell you now many times I had to walk through that creek.”