Story out of New Delhi, India:
Plenty of back-and-forth intermingling happens along the 2,500-mile zigzag border shared by India and Bangladesh. But the Bangladeshis are having trouble returning a four-and-a-half-ton Indian visitor to its home.
The experts left without any good ideas for how to quickly reunite the elephant with its herd in India.
The elephant’s odyssey began in June, when it was caught in the raging Brahmaputra River and Indian villagers pelted it with stones when it tried to come ashore. The elephant retreated to the river and was carried far downstream, eventually crossing the frontier into the wetlands of Bangladesh.
As the elephant plodded through the marshes, so many Bangladeshis trailed in boats that police officers were deployed to keep them away, according to the Press Trust of India, a news agency.
Bangladeshi forest rangers subdued the elephant with a tranquilizer dart on Thursday. It collapsed into the water and had to be hauled onto dry land.
The wildlife authorities have since given the elephant vitamins, bananas, banana stems, sugar cane and bamboo leaves, said Tapan Kumar Dey, chief executive of Bangladesh’s Nature Conservation Society, who is helping the government deal with the situation.
“The elephant is quite O.K. and enjoying the food now,” Mr. Dey said. “Managing the crowd is a bigger problem for us.” Cont.
Story from - The New York Times
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