Giants of the Monsoon Forest by Jacob Shell

Author:Jacob Shell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Chapter 6

STRANGE BEHAVIORS

THE DUAL WORLD IN WHICH ASIAN WORK ELEPHANTS live—as members of a human community by day and of a wild ecosystem by night—can lead to some strange elephant behaviors. Some elephants can become difficult.

I met the mahout Mong Cho, and his tusker Neh Ong, at a tiny logging camp nestled in a glen in the southwestern hills of Kachin State. Far below lay Hpakant, the jade-mining area, and next to it was a huge placid blue lake, Indawgyi, the largest in Burma. The bumpy ascent by motorcycle to Mong Cho’s hill camp had taken half an hour, the vehicle scurrying goatlike up the rockface along a route that could barely be called a footpath but that the motorcyclist had somehow mastered. I clung to his back. The driver was a Hkamti, like Mong Cho. In the motorcycle following us was J., a Kachin American spending her year after college graduation teaching English in Myitkyina. J. had helped arrange to get me to this spot.

We arrived at the camp, one of the smaller ones I saw during my travels. It contained a small group of six elephants: a large adult tusker, two adult females, two juveniles who were already taller at the shoulder than their mahouts, and one baby just a few years old. The youngest followed his mother around all day, observing her as she did light tasks. Usually the other adult female would attend to the calf as well, acting as an “auntie”—an arrangement borrowed from the family structure of wild elephants, where an infant is often raised and protected by two adult females. The older juveniles at the camp, around ten years in age, were able to do modest tasks like hauling smaller logs or piles of bamboo. Work elephants hit their prime at around twenty to twenty-five years of age and remain robust workers for about two decades.1

Mong Cho was the head mahout and owner of all the elephants here. There were three other mahouts to assist him: another Hkamti and two ethnic Burmese. The elephants were lounging under a grove of trees, munching on leaves. The three adults were tethered, while the young elephants were free to roam. The mahouts weren’t paying close attention and trusted that the younger generation wouldn’t wander too far from the adults. Next to the elephants was a small shelter for the mahouts, a green canvas roof suspended by several well-placed bamboo poles. A radio played traditional Burmese country music. The tinkling of the wooden bells worn by the adult elephants also filled the air. The camp would have been entirely secluded in the tree shade, but a small landslide from the rains had recently denuded a side of the glen, letting in streams of sunlight. A brook wound its way alongside the canvas tent, and the mahouts had built a kind of aqueduct for themselves, made of rubber and bamboo, transferring some of the running water into a basin. Next to the basin were also several smaller shelters protecting pots and pans from the rain and sunlight.

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