What cruel irony that I posted Mubushi’s story yesterday as today I got very sad news:
30th August 2011 has been another tragic and sad day
for all of us in our Nairobi Elephant Nursery,
and also for all the foster-parents of
this tiny orphaned elephant named Mumbushi,
the smallest baby in our Nairobi Nursery
who was deeply loved and cosseted by all.
After a promising start,
it is very difficult to weather
the sinking feeling of failure all over again,
combined with the emotional trauma
of losing one who was so deeply loved. Mumbushi was just 2 months old when
his elephant mother fell victim to poacher’s
within the Mt. Kenya forests,
not only taking her life for a tooth,
but also brutalizing her tiny two month old infant,
slashing him across the face with a machete,
leaving a deep gash and an eye that threatened blindness.
With daily tender loving care we could give him,
we healed his wound and his eye
and also the sorrow of losing his elephant mother.
For a brief few weeks little Mumbushi was whole again,
happy and playful and adored
by all the older Nursery elephants
as well as the Keepers and the visiting public who met him.
He charmed them all.
Then the teething began.
Cutting the first molars is always problematical for infant elephants,
and I wish I knew what magic formula their elephant mothers have
to alleviate the symptoms we see every time in the Nursery –
loss of appetite, diarrheoa and fevers.
For Mumbushi, this proved particularly difficult
because a number of teeth popped through at the same time,
pushing in different direction.
On top of everything else this simply proved too much.
He began to loose condition,
suffered stomach problems which we found difficult to control, went off his milk,
and just gave up the ghost
when the dreaded pneumonia struck two days ago
and failed to respond to injectible antibiotic.
He passed away at 4.30 a.m. this morning.