No matter where you live, there’s like some type of animal that your neighbors largely consider a nuisance.
While mice and bugs are pretty common choices that encompass a lot of the world, some areas tend to feature some more specific problem encounters. An alligator isn’t likely to end up in your backyard if you live in Minnesota, but it could be a different story if you live in Florida.
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And while Australia is known for a wide variety of terrifying spiders and snakes, you might actually be more likely to hear a resident there complain about cane toads than either of them.
By a similar token, we (rightly) tend to regard elephants as majestic and beautiful animals. But as we’re about to see, they’re also at the epicenter of a common and frustrating problem in Thailand.
On June 19, Ratchadawan Puengprasoppon of Thailand’s Chalermkiatpattana village woke up with a start to the sound of crashing and banging in her kitchen.
As The Guardian reported and as you’ll see in the full video, the reason for this commotion turned out to be an elephant named Boonchuay that lives at a nearby national park.
She soon discovered that the elephant had apparently punched a massive hole in her kitchen wall and was rummaging through the room with its trunk in search of something to eat.
Not only is this not the first time that one of the elephants from the park had wandered into the village, but it’s not even the first time that Boonchuay had come to that particular house.
Passing on information from Thai media sources, The Guardian reported that the last time he was there, he caused about $1,588 worth of damage.
And as superintendent Itthipon Thaimonkol of the Kaeng Krachan national park said, “They come to visit quite often. They always come when there is the local market because they can smell food.”
According to Dr. Joshua Plotnik, who studies elephant popluations at the Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary in western Thailand, elephants turn up to Thai villages and raid fields for corn and sugar cane on an almost nightly basis.
And while most villages are reportedly respectful of the elephants, their solutions of setting up barriers and moving the animals have only proved partially effective at best.
In Plotnik’s words, “They are frustrated that this is happening, and really want to find solutions to stop it, but they don’t usually blame the elephants.”
After all, elephants like Boonchuay here are only acting this way because things are tough for them as well.
According to Plotnik, a likely source for the recent increase in elephant intrusions has to do with a decrease in the food resources available to them and in human encroachments into their habitats.
As he put it, “If you don’t fulfil the elephants’ need for food, water and other resources in their natural habitat (or ensure they have them somewhere else), they will find ways around deterrents and access villages or cropfields in search of these resources.”
h/t: The Guardian
