KENYA: SAVING JETTA, THE TEENAGE ELEPHANT SPEARED IN THE BACK

Big Life Foundation is first on the scene. A short while later we are joined by Cynthia Moss, world-renowned elephant researcher, who arrives in the Amboseli Trust vehicle and pulls up beside us. “That’s Jetta,” she reveals before heading off. “She’s 16 years old, I know her family. She looks like she’s in a lot of pain, but she’s not paralysed. She might make it, but just make sure you have ropes to get her back up if things go wrong.”

The vet is still at least three hours away, flying in from Nairobi, with an ETA of 3pm at best. Jetta has dragged her injured body back to the park, most likely from across the Tanzanian border about eight kilometres away, because she knows this is a safe haven. She knows there are people here that can help her. “She’s likely been carrying this injury for up to five days,” Patrick observes as she fails to pull a tuft of grass from the earth. “She’s weak. We need to move fast.”

Read: Saving Jetta, Kenya's teenage elephant speared in the back