Baby Elephant was born under a broad spreading blackwood-tree at the edge of the great jungle in the Malay Peninsula. So, you see, he was an Asiatic elephant.
Baby Elephant's mother had chosen his birthplace with great care and judgment. The wild mothers are always wise concerning their young. It was shady and cool under the blackwood-tree, and there was plenty of underbrush to shield them from curious eyes, not that they needed greatly to be shielded, for the scent of the elephant is enough to strike terror to the heart of almost any of the jungle-dwellers, but it was well to be on the safe side. At the time Baby Elephant was born, his mother was fifty years old, but, as you have already learned, this is not an extreme age for elephants.
Baby Elephant's life for the first few weeks was very simple. The great herd to which he belonged and of which his mother was leader, slept in the daytime and fed by night. So when the tropical sun beat down over the plains with scorching heat, the elephants would go into the cool deep jungle and lie down in the shade to sleep; but when the sun had disappeared and the mellow moonlight flooded the plains, they came forth to graze. Baby Elephant's mother usually left him in the jungle, hidden away in some secure spot when she went forth to feed. Baby Elephant's own meals were very easily obtained. He simply took his fill of elephant-milk at his mother's udders, just behind her forelegs, whenever he was hungry. While taking his meal, he had to curl his trunk up along his mother's side to keep it out of the way.
Baby Elephant himself was a perfectly formed elephant, even at birth. Just like his mother and the rest of the herd, only very small, for while he weighed only two hundred pounds his mother weighed over five tons.
Baby Elephant was a very playful, inquisitive jungle baby and his inquisitiveness often got him into trouble. When he was about a month old he attempted to chew his mother's ear one day when she was lying down, and when she poked him away with her trunk he did not take the hint but went back to this new game again and again. Finally his mother tired of the sport and gave him such a push with her trunk that he went sprawling.
About the only times Baby Elephant left the jungle during the first weeks of his life were when he went to the water-hole to drink. At first he did not seem to know how to drink, but he watched his mother put her trunk in the water and fill it and then squirt the water into her mouth, and so Baby Elephant soon learned the trick. The mother elephant would also squirt the water over her body, giving herself a fine shower-bath. She treated Baby Elephant in the same way, much to his disgust at first, but he soon learned to like the shower-bath.
Among the worst things that Baby Elephant had to endure during his first summer were the swarms of ffies and mosquitoes. He did not much mind them on his skin, but they stung his eyes and nearly made him blind. Each day when he went to the water-hole his mother used to plunge his head under the water. At first he did not understand what she was doing it for and was much grieved at being so treated, but he finally saw that it was to wash the flies and mosquitoes away from his eyes and to cleanse them.
Like all wilderness babies, Baby Elephant was taught strict obedience. This applied especially to his staying just where his mother had secreted him when she went to feed in the night. Usually he was very good in this particular. She could come back after many long hours and find him just where she had left him. But one night he transgressed his mother's command and came to grief.
He had usually slept while his mother was away but this night he was not sleepy and felt very curious and mischievous. There were many strange sounds in the jungle about him and he wondered what they meant. At first he tried to sleep, but sleep would not come to him, so finally he got up and began wandering around. Every few minutes he would return to the spot where his mother had left him, for he knew it was not right to leave it. But gradually he grew bolder and went farther into the jungle. Finally he went so far that he became lost, and then he wandered around and around trying to find his way back. Once he encountered a wild boar which rushed past him in the underbrush. At last, when it was beginning to grow light in the east and he had become very lonely and fearful, he encountered a strange figure in the jungle path ahead of him. It was that of a long, live cat with phosphorus eyes and gleaming teeth and lashing tail. While Baby Elephant still stood staring at her. Spotted Leopard leapt full upon his back and sank her sharp claws into his side. Baby Elephant gave one painful, frightened squeak, which was as near as he could come to trumpeting, and bolted through the underbrush, being barely able to run under the weight of the leopard, which was itself not full-grown, or it never would have molested a young elephant.
As good luck would have it. Baby Elephant's mother had been trailing him for an hour just previous to this catastrophe, and in answer to his agonized trumpet came crashing through the underbrush. The leopard saw her before Baby Elephant did, and made its escape, while the young elephant ran trembling to his mother. For several days after that mishap he fairly hugged his mother's side, and he never again wandered away from the hiding-place.
One other mishap he had during that first summer, but this was not very serious. His mother had been feeding near the water-hole and supposed that Baby Elephant was tagging after her, but instead he was exploring the water-hole. He waded around and around in several new places where his mother had never taken him, and finally became mired and caught in a sort of quicksand. Struggle as he would, he could not get out, so he lifted up his trunk and trumpeted pitifully. His mountainous mother, whose maternal love seemed just as tender notwithstanding her great bulk, came running to his assistance. She waded in and wrapping her trunk about him pulled him from the quicksand and brought him back to safety.
During the latter part of the summer when Baby Elephant's first set of teeth were forming, he learned to nibble at the tender shoots on sugar-cane and bamboo tops and also at the plantain. Bamboo, sugar-cane, plantain, and certain tree-roots form most of the diet of the full-grown elephant, and in time they became that of Baby Elephant.
The young elephant early learned that his trunk was the most valuable member that he had. The end of the trunk is so fashioned that an elephant can reach down with the upper side and up with the lower side and use it as a hand. But the elephant is very careful of his trunk and when fighting holds it straight up. Most of his fighting he does with his tusks. Baby Elephant was the cause of a striking example of what a male elephant can do with his tusks when opportunity offers. Baby Elephant's mother and his sire were one day making their way through the jungle when they came upon a mighty Bengal tiger. The tiger had just killed a deer and was eating it directly in the pathway of the elephants. As the big bull elephant that was leading the little band approached, the tiger bared its fangs and snarled and refused to give way to the lord of the jungle. This so infuriated the elephant that he charged, head down, and caught the tiger fairly on his tusks. With a mighty upward movement of his head, he sent the tiger thirty feet into the tree-tops, and when this tiger came down, the fight had all gone out of him, and he slunk away in great haste.
Thus it was, sleeping in the jungle by day, and staying in hiding at night while the adult elephants fed on the plains, that Baby Elephant spent his first summer. But as the weeks passed and he grew larger and was weaned, he finally went with the herd when they fed at night, and this made him feel that he was really one of them. He had never quite outgrown his curiosity or his playfulness, however, for he was still a baby elephant.