by Adam Frost
‘Your mum’s due here any minute,’ she said.
‘How come?’ Sophie asked. ‘Is one of the elephants sick?’
‘Not sick,’ said Jane, ‘but worth keeping an eye on. You can probably guess why.’
Tom and Sophie took a closer look at the nine elephants in the field. There was the large bull, Rudolph: he was in a section all to himself, with a strong locked gate between him and the others. Then there were Hina and six other adult females: Laila, Jeanie, Taz, Betsy, Frieda and Mist. Finally, there was a six-year-old bull called Ricky, who was digging some bark off a log with his tusks.
‘Is Mum coming to see that one?’ Tom asked, pointing at Rudolph. ‘Is he on his own because he’s not well?’
‘No,’ said Jane, ‘he’s all right. He’s on his own because that’s how it would be in the wild. Adult males are solitary. They don’t like to mix. If you ever see a herd of elephants, it will just be women: sisters, mothers, daughters, nieces. And the odd young bull like Ricky there.’
‘Is it that elephant there then?’ asked Sophie, pointing to the female called Laila. She was at the back of the enclosure, not moving much, not doing much.
‘Blimey, she’s absolutely huge,’ said Tom. ‘Is Mum going to put her on a diet?’
‘She’s pregnant, isn’t she?’ Sophie said to Jane.
‘Due any moment,’ Jane answered with a smile.
Sophie squeaked with excitement and grabbed Tom’s shoulders. ‘We’re going to see a baby elephant! We’re going to see a baby elephant!’
When Sophie had calmed down, Mr Nightingale said to Jane, ‘You think it’s going to be this week?’
‘Definitely,’ said Jane. ‘We’ve been recording Laila, and she’s growling almost constantly. We think she’s telling the rest of the herd that the baby is coming.’
‘What do you mean “growling”?’ Tom asked. ‘I can’t hear anything.’
Jane pulled a pair of small headphones out of her pocket and handed them to Tom. When Tom had put them in his ears, Jane pressed Play.
Tom’s eyes widened. ‘Wow!’ he said. He passed the headphones to Sophie.
‘Are you using special equipment?’ Tom asked.
‘No, just a normal MP3 recorder,’ Jane said, ‘but we’re playing it back ten times faster. Elephants speak in such deep voices that we can only hear it if we increase the frequency.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Sophie, listening to the slow grumbling noises.
‘Elephants talk all the time,’ Jane explained. ‘They talk when they’re happy, when they’re sad, when they’ve found something, when they’re ready to move off. We’ve not been able to listen in till now.’
‘So those growls mean, “I’m about to pop”?’ Tom asked.
‘Something like that.’ Jane laughed and nodded. ‘The whole herd will help bring up this baby. So Laila needs to let them know it’s on its way.’
‘Can we use the MP3 player to growl back?’ Tom asked. ‘Let her know that everything’s going to be fine?’
Jane smiled. ‘She knows, don’t worry. We’ve been treating her like a princess for the last two years.’
‘Two years?!’ Tom exclaimed.
‘Yep.’ Jane nodded. ‘Laila has been pregnant for nearly two years. It takes that long to grow an elephant – longer than anything else on Earth. When the calf comes out, it will weigh about one hundred kilos – that’s heavier than you two put together.’
Tom and Sophie looked at Laila in wonder. She was padding around majestically in the morning sunshine now, her heavy sides swinging and swaying gently.
‘Isn’t that the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?’ Mr Nightingale asked.
Tom and Sophie nodded.
‘Me too,’ he said.
Chapter 4
Later that evening, when they were back on the barge, Tom and Sophie were still talking about elephants. They both sat on the sofa. Sophie started to leaf through her Big Book of Massive Mammals while Tom opened the family laptop and watched a film about baby elephants.
‘It says here that elephants have to be born naturally,’ said Sophie. ‘You can’t perform a Caesarean.’
‘I think I’m a Caesarean,’ said Tom, ‘or maybe a Capricorn.’
‘Don’t be daft, Tom!’ exclaimed Sophie. ‘Caesarean isn’t a star sign. It means the baby has to be cut out of the mother in an operation!’
‘Oh, right, yeah, of course,’ said Tom. ‘But why would you ever do that?’
‘If the baby gets stuck or is in distress,’ said Sophie, ‘or the mother gets sick.’
‘OK,’ said Tom, ‘but why can’t an elephant have a Caesarean?’
‘They can’t have any operations,’ said Sophie, glancing down at her book. ‘Their skin is so tough and wrinkly that it doesn’t heal properly when it’s cut. Stitches don’t work. Even if you make them out of metal wire.’ She looked out of the window. ‘I hope Laila’s baby will be OK.’
‘Course it will,’ said Tom. ‘Look at all these videos of baby elephants. They get born all the time without any problems.’
Sophie turned to look at the clips on Tom’s laptop. ‘Let’s watch that one,’ she said, pointing at a thumbnail of a pregnant African elephant in the Kruger National Park in South Africa.
‘I’ve watched it three times already, but OK,’ said Tom.
So Tom and Sophie watched videos of baby elephants for the next half-hour. There was a great one from an American zoo where all the keepers thought that the elephant calf was dead, but the vet said it wasn’t and she was right and they built its strength up with heat lamps and lots of water and cow’s colostrum. Colostrum is a really thick nutritious kind of milk that female animals produce when their babies are first born.
Another video showed a baby elephant who thought a keeper was its mum. This was because the keeper had hand-reared the calf as the mother elephant was sick.
Mr and Mrs Nightingale came in five minutes later. They had been on Grandad’s barge on the other side of the marina, getting some elephant tips. Grandad had helped to deliver several calves when he had been Chief Vet at London Zoo ten years before.
‘It’s late,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘Time to do your teeth and go to bed.’
‘Ohhh,’ Tom moaned, ‘elephants only need four hours a sleep a night. Why can’t we do the same?’
‘Brown bats sleep for twenty hours a day,’ said Mr Nightingale, ‘so it could be worse, don’t you think?’
Tom groaned and slunk off to the bathroom.
It was the middle of the night when Mrs Nightingale’s mobile phone started to ring. She picked it up, whispered into it for a few seconds and then started to get dressed.
The walls on the barge were very thin, so both Tom and Sophie had been woken up by the noise.
Sophie sat up in her bed and called out through the wall. ‘Is it Laila, Mum? Is she having her baby?’
‘Go back to sleep,’ said Mr Nightingale. ‘We’re going to get Grandad to come and sit with you.’
Tom got out of bed and stood in the hall. ‘Can’t we come with you?’ he asked. ‘We know loads about elephants.’
Mr Nightingale ran his hand through his rumpled hair. Mrs Nightingale pulled on her boots. Mr Nightingale looked at his wife, who shrugged her shoulders.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Get dressed then. Quickly.’
Forty minutes later, they arrived at the zoo. They ran to the elephant house, where Jane greeted them.
‘She’s doing really well,’ said Jane. ‘Maybe twenty minutes to go.’
Mrs Nightingale nodded and followed Jane into the barn. Mr Nightingale led the children into an office where two other keepers and a junior vet called George were already sitting. They’d be able to see everything from there on a video link. Tom and Sophie watched their mother and Jane appear on the screen and inspect Laila from the other side of the barn. Then they disappeared off the screen and came into the office.
‘Aren’t you staying in there with her?’ Sophie aske
d.
‘No, no,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘We don’t interfere. She’s doing fine by herself. We only get involved if there’s a problem.’
So together they watched Laila pushing and pushing. She was bending her back legs and whisking her tail back and forth. For a few minutes, all they could see was the edge of the grey amniotic sac, dangling and bulging between Laila’s back legs. Then, suddenly, the calf tumbled out all at once, hitting the ground with a gentle slap, followed by gallons of fluid that soaked the calf from head to toe and rippled across the floor of the barn.
Mr Nightingale and the other elephant keepers cheered. Tom and Sophie joined in.
But Mrs Nightingale was staring at the video screen. She was watching Laila and her calf intently. Laila nudged the calf with her foot and then tried to raise it up with her trunk. The calf just slumped back on its side.
‘George, come with me,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘Bring heat lamps. Fluid too. Something’s wrong.’
The office was suddenly silent as Mrs Nightingale ducked out of the door.
Tom and Sophie watched the screen in disbelief. Their mother was right. Laila was nudging her baby harder now, almost kicking it. But the little calf just lay there, limp and lifeless.
Tom and Sophie and their dad and the other keepers watched as Mrs Nightingale and George worked. There were heat lamps all around the calf, shining bright, warm light on its shivering body.
Mrs Nightingale was leaning over the baby now, monitoring its heartbeat. ‘His pulse is too low,’ she said. ‘His blood pressure needs to be higher too. And he’s having trouble breathing.’
Laila was stamping and fidgeting, clearly distressed.
‘It’s OK, girl,’ Mrs Nightingale whispered, patting her gently. ‘It’ll be fine.’
‘I’ve got the blood set up,’ said George, pointing at a red bag on a metal stand.
‘OK, go,’ said Mrs Nightingale. George fed a needle into the baby’s leg and taped a tube to its skin. Fresh blood started to pump through the calf’s body.
A few minutes passed. Mrs Nightingale stared at the monitor. ‘It’s not working,’ she said.
In the office, Sophie murmured, ‘It needs milk.’
‘What did you say?’ Tom asked.
‘Do you remember that video?’ Sophie said. ‘That elephant in the American zoo? They fed it cow’s colostrum. To make it stronger. Remember?’
Tom and Sophie told their dad about the video.
‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘We did that with a rhino last year. It was the same situation: the baby was too weak to take the mother’s milk, and the mother was too distressed to give any of her milk to us. Jane, do you keep cow colostrum on site?’
Jane shook her head. ‘I can get some couriered over from the local veterinary college,’ she said. ‘But it’ll take half an hour or so.’
‘Well, it’s got to be worth a try,’ said Mr Nightingale.
Half an hour passed. Mrs Nightingale and George had given the calf more blood and lots of water, which seemed to be helping it breathe more normally and kept its heartbeat steady. But its blood pressure was still low and it didn’t want to move. Its trunk curled up once or twice and then thumped back on the straw.
Mrs Nightingale turned to George. ‘We need to get some food into him. Do you keep colostrum here?’
‘I’ll find out,’ said George.
As he stood up, Jane came into the barn with some cow’s colostrum in a baby’s bottle.
‘You read my mind,’ said Mrs Nightingale.
‘Thank your daughter,’ said Jane. ‘It was her idea.’
‘Well done, Sophie,’ Mrs Nightingale said to herself. ‘You might have just saved this calf’s life.’
Jane went back to join the others in the office.
Mrs Nightingale held the bottle over the baby’s mouth and let some of the thick liquid drip on to its tongue. The baby didn’t react, so she tried again.
The calf’s blood pressure was dropping and its heartbeat was starting to slow.
‘Come on, you,’ encouraged Mrs Nightingale.
Laila was stamping and shuffling again. In the office, Mr Nightingale put his hand over his eyes. ‘We’re losing him,’ he said.
‘He’s too weak to drink,’ said Jane.
The calf gave a deep sigh.
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Sophie. ‘Look.’
Mr Nightingale looked back at the screen. The calf had the bottle in its mouth.
‘Heartbeat’s steady,’ said George.
The calf opened its eyes and looked at Mrs Nightingale. It latched on to the bottle again and started to drink.
In the office, Tom turned to his sister. ‘Sophie, remember that other video. When the calf was bottle-fed by a keeper, it ended up thinking the keeper was its mum. We’ve got to stop Mum before the calf gets confused.’
‘What was that?’ asked Jane.
Tom told Jane what they’d seen.
‘You’re right,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll go through and tell your mum now.’
Jane went back through into the barn. ‘We need to get it to take milk from Laila. So it imprints on her,’ she said.
‘Yes, I agree,’ said Mrs Nightingale, looking down at the calf as it sucked hard on the bottle. She gently removed the bottle from its mouth and squirted some colostrum on to Laila’s belly.
The calf started to swirl its trunk around, sniffing the air.
‘Milk’s over there,’ said Mrs Nightingale.
The calf looked everywhere but at its mother.
‘Mum’s over there,’ said Mrs Nightingale.
The calf got to its feet slowly but then fell over. Laila turned around and picked up the calf with her trunk again. This time, the baby stayed on his feet.
His trunk whirled around as he tried to control it. As he walked towards his mother, he nearly tripped over it. He looked over his shoulder at Mrs Nightingale.
‘Keep going,’ she whispered.
The calf sniffed the air and slapped his mother’s side with his trunk.
Laila shuffled her bottom towards him.
The calf took one last look at Mrs Nightingale, then threw his trunk over his head and drank from his mother.
He kept standing and drinking for five minutes, the frizzy hair on his head and back twinkling in the light from the heat lamps.
Mrs Nightingale put her hand on George’s shoulder. ‘Good work,’ she said.
George nodded and smiled. ‘You too, boss.’
He started to pack the equipment away.
In the office, everyone was cheering.
‘You two were brilliant,’ Jane said to Tom and Sophie. ‘As a reward, you should get to name him.’
‘No? Really?’ Sophie said.
‘Really,’ Jane said.
‘Well, there’s a boy in my class called Shaurya,’ said Tom. ‘Apparently it means “Brave Hero” in Hindi.’
‘Happy with that, Sophie?’ Jane asked.
Sophie thought about it for a second or two. Then she nodded. ‘It’s perfect.’
Jane smiled. ‘Welcome to Whipsnade Zoo, Shaurya!’
Chapter 5
After Shaurya’s arrival, the Nightingale family went back to their barge and slept till ten the next morning. Geese honked outside the windows but nobody heard them. Other barges steamed past, gently rocking the boat, but this just sent them into even deeper sleep.
Tom was the first to wake up. He immediately went into his sister’s room and stuck his face up to hers.
‘Come on, Soph. Let’s go and see Shaurya,’ he said.
Normally Sophie would have said, ‘Go away, Tom,’ but this morning she sat bolt upright. ‘Ten o’clock! Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?’
They went into their parents’ room. Mr and Mrs Nightingale had the day off, but they wanted to see Shaurya as much as Tom and Sophie did.
‘How long will Shaurya be a child?’ Tom asked as they were getting ready to leave. ‘Is it a couple of years, like Rex?’
‘No, elephants are like us,’ Mr Nightingale said. ‘They’re children for a long time. They reach adulthood at about eighteen.’
‘Cool, so we’ll be able to play with him for years!’ Tom exclaimed.
By eleven o’clock, the whole family was watching Shaurya and Laila as they were led from the paddock into the field to meet the other elephants.
‘Look what he’s doing with his trunk,’ Sophie said.
Shaurya had his trunk in his mouth and was sucking it, like a child sucking its thumb.
‘Yes, they do that,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘They don’t really know what to do with their trunk for the first few months. They put it in their mouth, whirl it around, drag it on the ground . . .’
The other seven elephants were crowding around Shaurya, sniffing him and stroking him with their trunks.
Shaurya was almost invisible behind their bodies and legs and the dust they were kicking up.
‘Is he OK in there?’ Tom asked.
‘He’s more than OK,’ Mr Nightingale said. ‘Shaurya’s family are introducing themselves. All his aunts and sisters. And his big brother, Ricky. They’ll all help to bring him up, not just his mum.’
‘So will they teach him how to use his trunk too?’ Tom asked.
‘They certainly will,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘They’ll teach him all kinds of things. How to use his trunk to pull up grass. How to use his tusks to break off bark. How to pull a branch off a tree and use it as a fly swat.’
‘Watching an elephant learn how to use his trunk is one of the most amazing things you’ll ever see,’ Mr Nightingale said, joining in. ‘Shaurya will use it to breathe, smell, touch, say hello, grab things, throw things, fight, trumpet and suck up water. He’ll even use it to breathe if he’s underwater – like it’s a snorkel. He’ll be able to move it quickly and slowly, roughly and gently. He’ll be able to use it to lift up a log or pick a flower.’