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On my way home.
As I was making my way back from
the Airfield a few months ago now around the end of May
2004 I noticed a very strange
phenomenon. A tree or large bush waving violently in the
wind or so it appeared at first glance. Being a pilot or a
student pilot anyway one always keeps an eye out for what
the wind is up to. It was strange because it appeared to
be the only one. Now the wind can’t move just one bush
amongst many around like that. Can it I asked myself?
Being nosey and as I was in no hurry just making my way
home after the sun had gone down a half hours or so since
after flying that evening I decided to investigate. I had
stopped my old pick up truck a few yards past the spot and
walked back on the dark lane just beside my home housing
estate. To where I had made the observation, this being
the field where the local shops if you can call them that
sit opposite to the small field that has the children’s
again for the want of a better word swing park, I say this
because neither are up to much. This is the field that has
the housing estate swimming pool a few yards further up
past the end of the shops. Well I know the Elephant
village is a cross the field on the other side of the road
but even so it was a big surprise when I found a ten foot
elephant searing out at me from the very much darkened
field.
Naturally I
said hello at first in English and then in Thai getting
little to no reaction in either. After all she was
enjoying eating the bush and disturbing anything Thai
while eating you get about the same reaction. So what to
do now? I asked myself I have done lots of things but
elephant driving is not one of them, could I just grab her
ear or something and expect her to follow me home, perhaps
not. I was concerned that an elephant should be out on her
own after dark as they have no side lights and are the
same colour as the road. There have been many times that I
have come across them on the road after dark and you
really don’t see them at all until you are right on top of
them and that’s when they are being controlled by a mahout
sitting on there shoulders. It’s my opinion that they
should have a bicycle lamp fitted to there tail while on
the road after dark and believe it or not some do in town
anyway. However trying to get the motorbikes to have a
tail light is enough of a problem let alone an elephant,
one of my friends Jim say he will write a book one day
entitled Tail Light Optional, but I think
the title of mine, Only the Names Have Been Change
to Protect the Guilty, is a better one. So
hopefully you take my point. However perhaps that’s a bit
long to be a good title, do let me know what you think. So
back to what to do with her, I was on my own and I
certainly couldn’t load her into the back of the truck it
would have been on it’s knees as she must have weighed a
few ton or so. Even if she would have been daft enough to
get in there. Now if I had had a bunch of bananas or if
had have been a human Thai female I would have had little
to no problem, in the case of the latter the waving of a
thousand baht note would have done the trick with ease. So
not being the latter and not anyway wishing to see my poor
old truck on it’s knees I decided the only thing I could
do was to go as quickly as possible with out trying to
break my neck so to speak around the road to the elephant
village and see if anybody there was interested in coming
back with me to get there missing village member.
So this I did,
when I got to the main gate about one hundred and fifty
yards as the crow flies and about one and a half
kilometres by road. No one seamed to be interested in
answering this crazy foreigner (flang) the Thai’s call us,
at the gate. I know they don’t like trying to converse
with flang’s when they have to, similar to a long time a
go now back in my office in Liverpool England after I that
bought out an export company that dealt manly with manly
the west Indies, if a foreigner was on the phone the cry
would go out from the young girl answering the phone it’s
a foreigner it’s a foreigner some any one take him off me,
so it’s only the same reversed. This was the case there
and the West Indians spoke English. Eventually after about
tem minuets one of the young men decided he had better
come and see what I was yelling about. I explained that I
had an elephant of there’s in my front garden well ok a
slight exaggeration but not so fare from the truth. The
young man having finally understood what on earth I was
prattling on about decided he had better grab one his
mates and do something about it sharppish. They both
jumped in the back of my truck quickly and went with me to
the site where I had left my friend the elephant.
Naturally as a little time had passed while I was trying
to make myself understood and the young men having to find
a few flashlights, I was concerned that the animal may
have wondered off again leaving her still in danger and me
looking very stupid or worse looking like I was playing
some big joke on them. Thank Buddha or some one anyway she
was only a few yards from where I had left her 30 to 45
minuets earlier. So I saved my face in perhaps more ways
than one the she was safe. |
