Gentle giant encounter - Elephants!

Here is a poem I wrote about the time I visited an elephant sanctuary and made friends with the most peculiar elephant there who happened to be saved from destructive captors.

My New Friend

From what I can imagine
She stood in the wrong field
Or rubbed up against the wrong tree.
She may have even been caged once
But now she runs free.

She now lives with many like her,
With plenty of hair, not fur.
She also has large round feet
With four to five protruding toes.

She charged over to me looking for food;
With a bag full, I didn't want to be rude.
After all I was too afraid to greet
I was even in familiar clothes.

Her eyes were as big as baseballs,
Her ears like kites in the wind,
She has wrinkly skin all over
Thick and rough; grey skinned.

But her nose was what most stood out
A wound nearing the tip of her snout.
No doubt she was in a fight,
She must have fought with all her might.

(however, it did not look like any bite...)

I can only imagine her trumpets of pain,
All because she would not be trained.

Her story rings true
That her captors had a machete
She didn't comply so
"Freddy. CUT IT ALREADY!"

Now a gentle giant,
Upwards of a tonne.
Because after ward we played in the river
Having lots of fun.

With a clever mind
And a spirit that is weightless
She is able to live safe in a sanctuary
Danger free and nameless.

Her story is like above that she was captured by poachers, they tried to train her but she wouldnt be broken. Frustration must have appeared within the captors as they proceeded to sever part of her trunk in half.

The sanctuary I went to was the Chiang Mai Mountain Sanctuary in thailand, here is a link to their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/chiangmaimountainsanctuary/
lovely energetic tour guide and beautiful friendly Elephants,

Im sorry I couldnt find a photo of the elephant but here is one from memory.

She was still able to move the bit of trunk on the end as it healed over

10 fun facts about Elephants:

1. Elephants have a highly developed brain and the largest of all the land mammals. The brain is 3 or 4 times larger than that of humans although smaller as a proportion of body weight.
2. An elephant’s skin is an inch thick
3. There are only two distinct species of elephant left in the world: The African elephant and the Asian elephant.
4. The oldest known elephant in the world lived for 86 years (1917 – 2003). The average lifespan of an elephant is from 50 to 70 years. The largest known elephant was shot in Angola in 1956 and weighed about 24 000 pounds! It had a shoulder height of 3.96 metres!
5. Elephants have two gaits – a walk and a faster gait that is similar to running. They cannot jump, trot or gallop, however they can swim and use their trunk as a snorkel.
6. The elephant’s very large ears are used to radiate excess heat away from the body.
7. Elephant behaviour is associated with a unique animal intelligence that displays grief, altruism, compassion, self-awareness, play, art and music!
8. Elephants can hear one another's trumpeting calls up to 5 miles (8 kilometers) away.
9. Elephants can get sunburned so they protect themselves with sand or dirt.
10. At the turn of the 20th century, there were a few million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, there are an estimated 450,000 - 700,000 African elephants and between 35,000 - 40,000 wild Asian elephants.