Another elephant elopes

Mamata was roaming in a park in Uttaranchal when she met her ‘blind date’

DEHRA DUN: A female elephant has gone missing from the Rajaji national park of Uttarakhand. Mamata was roaming in Chilla range of the park along with two other elephants yesterday when a wild tusker approached them. While the other two, Ragini and Radha, went back to their training camps, Mamata decided to follow her ‘date’ and is missing since then.

Hopeful of finding Mamata soon, park director G S Pande said, “Four teams of forest personnel have been fanned out in different parts of the park area to look for Mamata. We are hopeful of finding her very soon.” Mamata, along with Ragini and Radha (all 16) were brought to Rajaji park earlier this year from Delhi zoo for safari rides.

Ever since the death of 80-year-old Arundhati two months ago, Rajaji park, famous for Asiatic elephants, was left with only one elephant Raja for safari rides, which is the main source of income for the park. To lessen the burden on Raja, park authorities had brought three young female elephants and were training them for the jungle safari. The park is spread over 820 square kilometres and houses 22 species of mammals, apart from elephants.

In September this year, another pachyderm Sabitri (26) had eloped with a wild tusker from Jharkhand that broke through the circus tent in Raiganj, around 175 km from Kolkata.

When handlers called for Sabitri to come to them, she had looped her trunk around the bull’s leg and “he protectively shielded her like in a Bollywood blockbuster,” eyewitnesses had said. Satyaban, the wild tusker was probably in musth, a periodic condition in which bull elephants seek to mate.

However, the affair hadn’t gone very well since Sabitri later returned to her distraught mahout in the circus in eight days. It remains to be seen how long this blind date lasts.