When he was just 2 years old, Gen Thong lost his mother in the most agonizing way possible.
There wasn’t enough space at the tourist camp in northern Thailand where they lived – so she was chained to a tree, while little Gen Thong suckled from her.
Their owners, members of the Karen hill tribe, rushed to help the bellowing elephant. But they were too late to save her from the poison.
“Gen Thong was still suckling from his mother at this time,” Kerri McCrea, founder of Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary, tells The Dodo. “Unable to accept her death, he continued to try to suckle from her corpse before she was taken away to be buried.”
“Elephant owners in general are not wealthy people,” McCrea explains. “They rely on their elephants – who have been passed down in the family through generations – to bring in an income so they can provide for their families.”
McCrea, who had been working in the area, along with her partner Sombat, began spending time with Gen Thong.
“This is when we both saw how much limitation the elephants had in this particular camp,” she recalls. “We knew that there was no alternative for these elephants available due to the lack of jobs, but we had to do something to give these elephants a better life.”
Once in his forested forever home, and free from the backbreaking tourist grind, Gen Thong shrugged off the shadows of his dark past.
“Now that Gen Thong is able to choose what he wants to do … he no longer lashes out and has become so playful with both his family and mahouts,” McCrea explains. “His owner is so amazed with his progress and is very happy to keep him in the forest.”
Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary