Have you ever spotted any wild tuskers in Sri Lanka? So today I'm going to introduce you'll a beautiful tusker elephant who i spotted in a National Park. This tusker elephant is rarely seen by people and he is a very harmless elephant named "Bullet". We started our journey towards the national park early in the morning and reached the national park at 11.00 am. Some Villagers told us different locations where this tusker elephant can be seen in either side of the park. But unfortunately we were not lucky enough to see this elephant in the morning and afternoon. And we got to know from the Villagers that this tusker is already there in either side of the national park searching for food in the evening. So we quickly packed up our cameras and bags and raced our vehicle in search of the tusker in the evening. We were lucky enough to spot the beauty from the first day itself. And i immediately pulled out the gopro from my bag and went near the tusker to spot some beautiful photographs. In the evening we returned back to our hotel by dusk.
Tusker Elephant "Bullet" - P.C Supun Karunaratne
Bullet was just three or four months old
when Elephant Transit Home became his home. He was from Chettikulum, a village situated
in the vast forested area between Madawachchiya and Vavuniya – which was
ravaged by the war. Many people were evacuated from the village and the
remaining families lived in houses along the main road. The wounded and
limping baby elephant was seen by the villagers who was fortunately
secured and handed over to the nearby police post. The police in turn
informed the wildlife office in Anuradhapura, who took the
responsibility of the baby elephant, and was later transported to the
ETH.
The baby elephant, who was named
“Senadhi”, after the village it was rescued from, had a critical wound
on his right leg. It was a gunshot wound and the bullet had entered from
behind and exited through the front of the upper part of the leg.
Fortunately, the bullet had missed the baby calf’s femur. The wound was
infected in the passage between both openings and pus was running freely
from one end to the other. The bullet wound suggested a nickname for
Senadhi. When he was being treated the ETH, one of the assistants called
him “Bullet”. That name was apt for a baby elephant in his condition;
thereafter, the baby elephant was called Bullet, by everyone and the
name Senadhi was only used for official records.
Bullet’s wound was serious; he couldn’t
walk properly, and due to the agonizing pain, he even refused to drink
milk. It is essential to maintain body fitness in baby elephants when
they are wounded because if they become weak it’s difficult for them to
recover and the wounds would only get worse. Therefore, the officers at
ETH had to force feed Bullet when he refused to drink milk. Furthermore,
he was kept in a restricted area with limited space for movement.
Thanks to intensive management, within two or three months, his wound
was completely cured.
Though Bullet was a young male, even at
that stage he had distinguishing special characteristics in his shape,
particularly his head. Most of the characteristics matched those in the
ancient books on lephant castes. According to those descriptions, it was
assumed that Bullet should belong to one of the highest castes, from it
was predicted he was a tusker. After a year this was quite evident as
there was a prominent swelling of the palate on either side of Bullet’s
trunk. (In Sri Lanka, on a small percentage of male elephants have
tusks).
In 2003 Bullet, by then a majestic
juvenile tusker, was released into a National Park with other
orphans. As usual, after living together for a while, the released batch
split and gradually joined the wild herds. Bullet, too, lived as a
permanent member of a herd. However, recently Bullet has been living
away from the herd and can be seen wandering in the park alone or with
other adult or sub-adult loners. This is a typical behavioural
characteristic of sub-adult male elephants.If everything goes well and
with no human disturbance, within several years Bullet will be one of
the prominent breeding bulls. He would then
spread his precious genes into generations to come. If this is the case,
future human generations may also be lucky enough to see majestic
tuskers in the wild.
Bullet peeps out in search for food Photo credits - Supun Karunaratne
Photo Credits - Supun Karunaratne
On the next day we were searching for this tusker early morning and we luckly found him before we left the Park. This youngster mostly loved to eat alot of fruits and Sweet Corn. Most of the people who passed him gave him many fruits and fed this lucky fellow. I was super lucky to spot this tusker elephant and special thanks goes to my boss "Rajiv Welikala" who is very specialized in Wild life and photography.
