A wild tusker kept officials on the toes on Thursday when it tried sneaking into the jumbo spa camp at the banks of river Bhavani near Mettupalayam in Coimbatore district.
Since the officials were busy on the first day of the seven-week camp where 45 elephants from different temples across Tamil Nadu will get rejuvenated, they did not notice the wild elephant trying to enter the venue.
Alerted by locals on the charging wild tusker, officials ran for cover, while temple elephants and their mahouts had a tensed half-an-hour.
“Locals blasted firecrackers to chase the tusker back into the forest, but it did not work. The visiter was adamant to enter the camp,” a Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department official involved in organising the camp said.
“It was also acting very wild and also about to damage some huts,” he said. The elephant is believed to have surfaced from the forest near Mettupalayam in Coimbatore district. It took an hour-long struggle for officials to push the animal back into the forest. Extra forest security personnel were deployed around the camp to stop wild animals from entering the camp.
Rehabilitation
The AIADMK government in the state has been organising the rest and rehabilitation camp for temple elephants since it came back to power in the year 2011.
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