By Steffi Joseph
Playful as ever, Chanchal has lived up to her name with her daily antics, winning hearts every day. Our 17- year old is a water baby and spends much time rolling in the pond.Her name is just enough to bring a grin on the face of our vets and mahouts.
Chanchal was rescued on the 30th of June, 2012 after a road accident in Noida. She was severely injured with bruises on her body and a cut on her right knee. She was unable to bend one knee and that was a sign of a possible ligament tear. She refused to get onto the rescue truck and was only able to be loaded up when she was lightly sedated. She was in a very sorry state when she came to the center. Weak, malnourished and traumatized were the words to describe her condition.
Chanchal did not really appreciate a lot of the people who were at the rescue center when she first arrived. She kept to herself and wouldn’t even interact with the other elephants. It took her approximately a year to get over her traumatic experience as a begging elephant and get comfortable with her new found freedom and her new life at Elephant Haven.
Today, Chanchal is approximately 17 years old and weighs a little over 3500 kgs. She is in excellent health. She can be spotted playing with tyres and has an aura of glee around her. She’s always stealing food from Maya and Laxmi and it is always an amusing sight for the caretaker and the mahouts at Elephant Haven. She loves fruits and enjoys the extra treats that the elephants get when there are visitors. She is the first one to come near the visitors, so she often gets the lions share of the extra treats.
She is also often seen tumbling in the mud right after a clean bath, much to the mahout’s distress. “Mud-baths are an instictive move for elephants to keep flies and insects away,” said Dr. Yaduraj, head vet at the Elephant Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.
Chanchal, who is a very notorious elephant is only obedient to Asif, her mahout with whom she shares a very special bond. Chanchal loves taking those long endless walks and Asif is the oly one who can get her to come back to her enclosure when it starts getting dark.
