However, as they got closer to the elephant village, they saw several groups of tourists riding elephants back and forth along the way.
Emmeline was anxious.
She frowned, and a faint worry appeared on her face.
“Honey.” she said to Abel, “The elephants look so pitiful. They are all emaciated and have wounds on their bodies. Are they regularly abused?”
“I think so!” Abel frowned deeply.
The elephants passing by were covered in deep hook marks.
Some elephants had blood oozing from their foot pads as they struggled to carry the tourists.
Emmeline felt a sourness, and tears were about to fall.
She was not a saint but could not stand watching animals suffer.
Animals cannot speak and have no ability to fight back, allowing cruel humans to abuse them.
Just thinking about it made her heart ache.
After a while, the car entered the elephant village with more elephants.
There were also more vendors soliciting tourists to ride elephants.
Emmeline and Abel got out of the car and followed the crowd inside.
“Ah!” Suddenly, a piercing cry of a young elephant came from not far away.
Emmeline’s heart trembled, and she frowned.
Abel felt her hand clenched in his palm and asked in a low voice, “What’s going on, Emma?”
“Can you hear the elephant crying?” Emmeline’s eyes welled up with tears, “It sounds like it’s in a lot of pain.”
“Maybe we should go back.”
Abel was afraid that if Emmeline saw the cruel scenes, she would be sad and traumatized.
“I want to go see that elephant,” Emmeline said. “It’s not being abused, is it?”
Abel hesitated for a moment and nodded. “Well, alright then.”
“Ouch!” The elephant’s agonizing cry echoed again.
The nearby tourists also expressed sympathy and distress upon hearing it.
“Is someone abusing the elephant?”
“Is this elephant being trained?”
“It sounded very cruel.”
Emmeline was increasingly worried.
The small hand clenched in Abel’s palm was also sweaty.
Abel knew what the baby elephant was going through.
After five years of special training, he had witnessed such scenes in the jungle tribe.
In front of the elephant park, the villagers had imprisoned a baby elephant for training.
The elephant trainers’ iron hooks to beat the baby elephant probably caused its agonizing cries just now.
Usually, the villagers start training the elephants from a young age.
And indeed, it involves a series of cruel acts.
The baby elephants were taken away from their mothers when they were young and forced to separate from them.
They were kept in a very small cage, only able to stand and unable to move freely.
The elephant trainers would use sharp spears to stab them to eliminate their wildness.
At the same time, they were only given very little food and water.
After enduring physical and mental torture for a long time, the elephant trainers would finally feed the baby elephants.
And then, they would ride on their backs, training them to perform specific actions.
The baby elephants could only submit to the trainers to obtain food and prevent elephant hook pokes.
Abel did not want to bring Emmeline over, afraid she would not be able to see it.
But he also thought that maybe he could help the poor baby elephant.
They crossed through the jungle and entered the elephant park, and finally, they saw the baby elephant.
Indeed, just as Abel had anticipated.
And even more cruelly, not far from the baby elephant, a mother elephant knelt on the ground, seemingly pleading with the mahout to spare her child.
The mother elephant whimpered softly, her massive and emaciated body trembling.
Her heart was convulsing in pain.
Meanwhile, the elephant trainers held a stick with an iron-tipped hook and once again jabbed it into the baby elephant.
“Ah!”
As the baby elephant uttered a piercing scream, the mother elephant wailed and banged her head on the ground.
Tears welled up in Emmeline’s eyes.
Just as Abel was about to embrace her, Emmeline scolded the elephant trainers, “Stop! Don’t treat it like this!”
