Olare

• Grace Lees, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2011

She stampeded down the dirt track, lifting her trunk in delight. She happily drank the milk that was provided for her in her little den. Olare is a baby elephant that was rescued by the David Sheldrick wildlife orphanage.

This is Olares story.


Olare and her mother were enjoying some juicy thorn bush trees. Some poachers caught sight of the pair and wanted the mothers tusks. They crouched behind a thorn bush and aimed their gun at the mother. The bullet shot out and into the mothers leg. The mother sensed the hunters and began to charge. They shot her again. The mother fell to the ground.

Just as the poachers were about to cut off the mothers tusks they heard a truck. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Rescue had arrived. The poachers fled, leaving no clues behind. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Rescue team took the baby elephant. They looked at the mother and decided to ‘put her down’ as she would never recover.

On a recent trip to Africa we decided to adopt Olare so we could help her live. There were other elephants at the elephant orphanage where we discovered Olare, but we touched Olare and she felt beautiful. She was spikey and hairy too, but she would stick her trunk through the bars of her den and try to pull our hands in. We knew we wanted her to be ours.

Most people think of elephants as dangerous creatures that will charge and trample you, but we saw a soft and playful side in Olare. Wild elephants just want to be left alone to enjoy their time in the wild. They will leave people alone if we don’t come too close and annoy them.

Olare and her mother were victims of poachers. Poachers are cruel people that kill animals for a living. But the worst thing is, in Africa they cut off the tusks of the elephants and leave the remains to waste in the Savannah. Sometimes they don’t die straight away like Olares mother.

Olare will now remain without her mother and in the care of the David Sheldrick Wildlife care. She will soon be realesed back into the wild to join a new family and regain her wild side again.

Ivory is beautiful but most beautiful on elephants not necklaces or as a table not as a vase or statue but on elephants. Ivory is the tusk of the elephant which is cut off and sold.

If you ever get the chance to see real elephants in the wild make sure that it stays in your heart forever because it my never happen again.

So help us put an end to poaching by not buying products related to poaching and going against it. By doing this you might be saving one elephant and that elephant may become a parent the next day. So by helping one elephant we are helping the species.

Help put an end to poaching and save the species. Elephants are beautiful creatures and we don’t want to lose them.

By Grace Lees.