SIX months after rising to global fame with her overnight escapade to the lounge of Thula Thula owner Françoise Malby-Anthony, Zululand’s baby ellie ‘Tom’ has accepted that her days of wandering are over.
And she is content with the status quo with rangers at the Ntambanana private game reserve confirming that she has not left her mother’s side for a second following the incident earlier this year.
‘She is growing well, being very good and is behaving. She is often found right under her mum’s tummy,’ Malby-Anthony told the Zululand Observer on Friday.
At just one-week-old, the calf suffered a traumatic ordeal after wandering about for almost 18 hours when she mysteriously strayed from her herd in March.
Described as ‘divine intervention’ and with a little help from the ‘Elephant Whisperer’, the late conservationist Lawrence Anthony himself, the starving, dehydrated and visibly stressed baby Tom somehow found her way to the Anthony home.
With her mother ET being rescued from trophy hunters more than a decade ago by Lawrence, the survival and maternal instinct in baby Tom manifested when she managed to evade dangerous predators of the night to eventually reunite with her mother.
Françoise confirmed last week that a BBC wildlife documentary on animal relationships shot at the Zululand game reserve in April would air next month.
The programme, featuring the celebrity baby elephant, focuses on the special relationships between elephants within their herds, behavioural patterns and the adventures relating to the famous herd rescued by Lawrence.
But despite her days in the international media limelight, baby Tom is most content grazing with mum at the Thula Thula sanctuary for now.
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