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Up early again for our jobs and this morning we had to unload all of the elephants food off the truck, load it onto the shelves, pack some into baskets, transfer them to a water trough, wash them, and pack them into clean baskets.
A lot of work.
However.
I took to passing the melons to Pete, who put them in a basket - seemed a good system. Yet every time I found a squishy, over-ripe melon, I thought it a great idea to throw them at Pete, a boxer, and he punched them mid-air. The melons exploded into the air and smashed onto the ground. We asked Hailee to take a photo of the boxer at work. I launched the mushy melon, it flew toward Pete, his fist met the fruit, and it exploded all over his face. Everywhere. All over him. Completely.
I can't wait to see the photo.
After a Thai lunch, we decided to explore the park. We went to cat kingdom, and found a litter of 8 kittens. We named them all: mango, baby, bea, Buddha, scat, specks, bitey and one eye. We all had our faves.
Another creature who stole my heart was a dog called Steel, who was completely paralysed from the waist down. She had been hit by a car, and then left in a cage by her owners. She's the sweetest dog, who just wants a bit of love and affection. Despite being incontinent and often defecting in the run, I still loved her! She's the one in the photo.
Later that day, the task was to move the sand from the elephant areas and replace with new sand (they sleep on this). It seemed to me like a lot of work. Did I muck in and be a team player? Hell no. Pete and I skived and went to walk dogs.
There are 400 dogs and they hardly have enough volunteers to walk them. This was a more worthwhile task to me than moving sand! We walked several dogs, including one with a chronic skin condition called Leslie, and one very shy dog called Bloy who decided to collapse onto her back every time she walked a few paces. Bless.
Next was washing the elephants again, however, we decided to jump on the bandwagon of this new Ice Bucket Challenge craze. We all lined up, grabbed a bucket of ice water, and tipped it over our heads. But coordinating 30 people wasn't easy, and the entire thing was a shambles!
Later on, we had a discussion with one of the staff about elephant behaviour. While interesting, she made us feel like we were in the way, and no help to the animals. She explained that an elephant is happy when it's left to it's devices and with it's family and friends, doing what they naturally do. So we felt a bit useless and a nuisance to our favourite creatures. Cheers.
Another eve of drinking and games and being told off for being too loud. Whoops!
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