Residents of the industrial city of Rourkela, located in India, praise a 14-year-old girl who single-handedly coped with a herd of elephants.
The industrial city of Rourkela was seized with panic when its inhabitants learned of the night invasion of wild elephants. The fear of the townspeople is quite understandable, given that over the past few years, this region has become the epicenter of conflicts, in the center of which have been a man and an elephant. So, over the past 10 years, 800 people and 200 mammals of the Proboscis order died in these confrontations.
Officials from the Forestry Department tried to scare away the intruders, but all they managed was to drive the animals into the stadium.
“When the herd entered the city, we tried our best to contain their advance. We managed to get 11 elephants, including 2 cubs, into the stadium, but we understood that sending them into the forest would be a difficult task,”the Department official admitted. - Later we remembered a girl from the neighboring state of Jharkhand, who supposedly knows how to talk to elephants. We called her father and asked him to bring Nirmala to us."
Upon arriving in Rourkel, 14-year-old Nirmala Toppo prayed and then went to “fellowship” with the animals. Gradually, the schoolgirl took the elephants outside the stadium, and then the city. She walked a long distance with the herd, causing blisters on her heels.
However, the brave Nirmala considers this a small price to pay for saving the townspeople.
“My wounds are almost healed and have not been infected, so I'm fine,” she says. “The main thing is that I managed to help people.”
Promotional video:
According to Toppo, she decided to master the unusual taming technique after her mother was killed by wild elephants.
“I am helped by a father and a few boys who surround the flock,” adds Nirmala. “And then I go next to the animals, pray and persuade them to go back to the forest. I explain to them that the city is not their home."
True, not all townspeople believed in the effectiveness of her method: public figure Rabi Pradhan said that wild elephants cannot understand, let alone listen to human speech.