"They're headed home!" No, not the Baltimore Orioles, but a group that moves at about the same glacial pace. It's that herd of elephants that roamed around Southwest China, a largely urban area, for over a year. They had a good time during everyone else's COVID stay-home experience, wandering about and plundering farms and a retirement home for their food.
Chinese officials sent trucks and people and drones to keep an eye on the ponderous pachyderms. They would clear out roads that the pack seemed likely to tread, and they kept them away from populated areas by leaving tons of food along the roads as a lure. They stalked through several villages, and got close to the Yunnan provincial capital of Kunming, but they mostly shunned big towns, which was good, and no humans were hurt, which was really good!
The leader of the herd led all 14 of them across the Yuanjiang river in Yunnan on Sunday night in the picture above, and the next stop on the itinerary will be a return to the nature reserve where they lived in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.
No one knows why they went on this journey, and who was going to stop them? They were 300 miles away, up in Kunming, when they decided to head back down south.
Along the way, one of the males wandered off from the group. He was tranquilized and give a ride back to the reserve.
China is very serious about protecting their 300 remaining Asian elephants. Just like in the US and other "modern" countries, farming and urban growth have reduced their habitat. At long last, people are thinking more about the elephants than the factories.
I understand why it was necessary to protect animals from cruelty and exploitation, but it's still a shame that Baltimore-area rose gardens lack a lot in color and vitality as a result of the circus no longer coming to town. The annual parade of pickup trucks and station wagons going to the Civic Center to pick up free "fertilizer" was always something to see!
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