Lucknow, India - A baby elephant injured in a cross-country truck journey is guzzling rum, munching eggs and lolling in water as she recovers in a north Indian zoo, doctors said on Friday.
Three-year-old Jaya was intended as India's gift to the Japanese government. She is being given hydrotherapy - treatment by water - and a quarter bottle of rum each day to treat her partially paralyzed body and injuries in her back, said G.P. Sharma, director of the zoo in Lucknow, capital of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The 475kg pachyderm suffered the injuries during a 1 000km trip across northern India. The elephant had been offered as a gift during a visit to Tokyo by India's Defense Minister George Fernandes.
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"She has shown signs of improvement since then," Sharma said.
"The minute she smells rum she gets too excited," said Niranjan, her keeper who uses only one name. She is also fed half a dozen eggs with powdered milk each day for breakfast.
Every day for about half an hour, Jaya is allowed to play in a pool as veterinarians try to reactivate her nerves. But she still seems reluctant to eat her usual diet of 15kg of cane sugar and bananas.
Jaya came from a zoo in Gauhati, in northeastern Assam state, and was chosen because she was young, tame and playful.
The driver transporting her to New Delhi for air shipment to Japan travelled for two days without letting her off the truck. Much of the trip was in cold weather that Jaya was unaccustomed to.
On the second day, she collapsed onto her side and could not get up, and she was rushed to the nearest zoo in Lucknow on January 8.
When heavy animals such as elephants and rhinos lie on their sides, their nerves are restricted and they become paralyzed, said R.I. Singh, the chief wildlife warden in Lucknow. - Sapa-AP
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