A baby elephant is saved after it fell into a narrow ditch and got stuck on its back.
An onlooker recorded the event, claiming that the elephant had been struggling with its four legs in the air for about three hours before being saved by a rescue team.
After locals heard the calf’s cries and found that she was unable to get up, forest officials rushed to save her.
The crew was dispatched to the Haridwar district in western India, where they devised a plan to dig a hole with a JCB excavator so that the elephant could stand up.
The JCB digs a bigger hole near the struggling elephant to widen the ditch.
Finally, as the hole grows larger, the calf is able to roll over and stand up again.
Afterwards, she can be seen shuffling out of the hole and was presumably reunited with the rest of her herd.
‘The calf fell into a ditch and became trapped when the elephant herd was returning to the forest after raiding a farm,’ Komal Singh, an official with the Indian Forest Service, said. She was fortunate that she was discovered on time.’
