We are proud new parents!

We are happy to announce that we are the proud new parents of a beautiful baby girl! She has a nose like her father, and the appetite of her mother.... and we couldn't be more happy. Here is a copy of the "birth certificate":


And here is a shot of our new bundle of joy:



Our good friend Emma, who is from Ireland and doing some post-doc work here at ILRI, adopted an orphaned elephant at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust here in Nairobi. It's a center where they rehabilitate baby elephants that have been orphaned in the wild. Anyhow, she invited us to visit her elephant tonight (foster parents get to come in at a special time and get to see the elephants up close and personal). As a gift she ended up adopting one for us too, and we now find ourselves parents of a baby elephant!

Her name is Galdessa, and actually the shot above isn't her, but it is one in an adjacent pen which is about 15months old or so. Ours is only 3 months so it is much smaller! It was airlifted just today from Tsavo National Park where it was found in a generator shed by one of the park staff. Since it has only arrived we didn't spend too much time with it because it is still a little spooked from the trauma of the past 24 hours. We'll have some shots of her when we go back to check on her progress in about a week or so.

As her "foster parents" we get continuous email updates about her progress. Also we get the special privilege of coming in after viewing hours and actually being able to pet her and generally spend some time getting to know her (something which you can't do during regular hours!). Anyhow, we look forward to blogging about her progress. As I mentioned, she seems to have suffered some trauma over the past while, so we hope that she settles into her new surroundings.

The link below is for the project's website, and it has some great information: