My beloved Pinky, the baby turtle in danger

My beloved Pinky

This morning it was gorgeous, when is it not, right?

I was enjoying the fish and the coral and the sunrays and it was as if I was in heaven...also my heart and mind were in heaven , because I didn’t have any wish that it was different than it was.

I was happy, cruising around; being is awe for every creature on my path.
I love to swim and just feel the water caressing my body…my thoughts would go to loved ones, but I never really missed the moment…haha …how many times do we not miss the moment?
I can truly say that when I am in nature I have NO desire to be somewhere else. I have NO desire to go to neither the past nor the future…
Only my stomach would make some deep intense sounds to make me aware that it will need something really soon in the near FUTURE..but that is it…more than that I never really travel into a time zone (past or future) that is truly not even of my business.
I often laugh with my friend B. when she announces, just before we go in the water, that her boyfriend comes to visit her and that she needs to be on time out of the Ocean. Mostly it is then when God presents us a task or a wonder that brings us in a NO TIME ZONE.
Most of the time she ends up than an hour to late…haha… Plan A, Plan B and then we have God’s plan!

Once we got distracted by a huge pile of fishing nets and debris and it took us a lot of ‘time’ and effort to get it out of the water, the other times it is a dolphin or shark or turtle that takes us away in the JOY-ZONE of NO-TIME!
The JOY-ZONE is THIS MOMENT now…
It is the only moment you can feel ALIVE and feel INTER-connected with all what is.

It is in that moment that you encounter the most magical experiences.

The trick is AGAIN…as mama-P. would repeat; “Be the one you are and love your life!”
Or as Rumi it would say;” Let yourself be silently drawn by the pull of what you really love.”

 

I don’t know if you read the elephant whisperer, I did. It is amazing what this man did with the elephants. He kind of rescued them, but more he went living with them. That is kind of what I do…humbly I don’t want to compare myself with this great man…but when a pod of dolphins visits us it becomes my family. If it would be me, would probably go and live with them…J but more difficult then elephants! They are on land and the dolphins are in the water…J

The turtles know me by now as family too. They hear my splashing (my friends call me ‘bubbles’ sometimes to make me aware I still splash when I swim…I guess that’s me J and I am not really thinking about it, really. Now they know if they read my blog J)

I see that those sweet animals get so used to me and that I am part of them (I am them and they are me) and that is where I compare me a little with this amazing man, who wrote the book elephant whisperer.

This is his story in a short version:

For 12 hours, two herds of wild South African elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who saved their lives. The formerly violent, rogue elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.”

For two days the herds loitered at Anthony’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu – to say good-bye to the man they loved. But how did they know he had died? Known for his unique ability to calm traumatized elephants, Anthony had become a legend. He is the author of three books, Babylon Ark, detailing his efforts to rescue the animals at Baghdad Zoo during the Iraqi war, the forthcoming The Last Rhinos, and his bestselling The Elephant Whisperer.

There are two elephant herds at Thula Thula. According to his son Dylan, both arrived at the Anthony family compound shortly after Anthony’s death.“They had not visited the house for a year and a half and it must have taken them about 12 hours to make the journey,” Dylan is quoted in various local news accounts. “The first herd arrived on Sunday and the second herd, a day later. They all hung around for about two days before making their way back into the bush.

A line of elephants approaching the Anthony house, but these are wild elephants in the 21st century, not some Rudyard Kipling novel. The first herd arrived at Thula Thula several years ago and was violent. They hated humans. Anthony found himself fighting a desperate battle for their survival and their trust, which he detailed in The Elephant Whisperer:“It was 4:45 a.m. and I was standing in front of Nana, an enraged wild elephant, pleading with her in desperation. Both our lives depended on it. The only thing separating us was an 8,000-volt electric fence that she was preparing to flatten and make her escape.“Nana, the matriarch of her herd, tensed her enormous frame and flared her ears.“’Don’t do it, Nana,’ I said, as calmly as I could. She stood there, motionless but tense. The rest of the herd froze.“’This is your home now,’ I continued. ‘Please don’t do it, girl. ’I felt her eyes boring into me.

“Suddenly, the absurdity of the situation struck me,” Anthony writes. “Here I was in pitch darkness, talking to a wild female elephant with a baby, the most dangerous possible combination, as if we were having a friendly chat. But I meant every word. ‘You will all die if you go. Stay here. I will be here with you and it’s a good place.’“She took another step forward.
I could see her tense up again, preparing to snap the electric wire and be out, the rest of the herd smashing after her in a flash.“I was in their path, and would only have seconds to scramble out of their way and climb the nearest tree. I wondered if I would be fast enough to avoid being trampled. Possibly not.“Then something happened between Nana and me, some tiny spark of recognition, flaring for the briefest of moments. Then it was gone. Nana turned and melted into the bush. The rest of the herd followed. I couldn’t explain what had happened between us, but it gave me the first glimmer of hope since the elephants had first thundered into my life.”

It had all started with a phone call from an elephant welfare organization. Would Anthony be interested in adopting a problem herd of wild elephants? They lived on a game reserve 600 miles away and were “troublesome,” recalled Anthony.“They had a tendency to break out of reserves and the owners wanted to get rid of them fast. If we didn’t take them, they would be shot.“The woman explained, ‘The matriarch is an amazing escape artist and has worked out how to break through electric fences. She just twists the wire around her tusks until it snaps, or takes the pain and smashes through.’

“’Why me?’ I asked.“’I’ve heard you have a way with animals. You’re right for them. Or maybe they’re right for you.’”What followed was heart-breaking. One of the females and her baby were shot and killed in the round-up, trying to evade capture.

“Their bid for freedom had, if anything, increased their resentment at being kept in captivity. Nana watched my every move, hostility seeping from every pore, her family behind her. There was no doubt that sooner or later they were going to make another break for freedom.
“Then, in a flash, came the answer. I would live with the herd. To save their lives, I would stay with them, feed them,talk to them. But, most importantly, be with them day and night. We all had to get to know each other.”

So, how after Anthony’s death, did the reserve’s elephants — grazing miles away in distant parts of the park — know?
“A good man died suddenly,” says Rabbi Leila Gal Berner, Ph.D., “and from miles and miles away, two herds of elephants, sensing that they had lost a beloved human friend, moved in a solemn, almost ‘funereal’ procession to make a call on the bereaved family at the deceased man’s home.”

“If there ever were a time, when we can truly sense the wondrous ‘interconnectedness of all beings,’ it is when we reflect on the elephants of Thula Thula. A man’s heart’s stops, and hundreds of elephants’ hearts are grieving. This man’s oh-so-abundantly loving heart offered healing to these elephants, and now, they came to pay loving homage to their friend.”

 

So touching to me….

Sometimes I feel that I am called to Hawaii to ‘save’ dolphins or turtles. I help them and entangle them, but I don’t like the term ‘TO SAVE’, it says that they need me and are helpless and that is not true. Or I don’t want that to be true, let say it like that.
So let me be a dolphin or turtle whisperer; I like that better then a saver or rescuer.
Maybe I am just an animal LOVER…J Or a LOVER JJJ
It is so that I feel that I am regularly placed in positions where I am asked to help animals.
I have regularly sick dolphins come up to me asking for healing energy. Or I end up swimming to the right spot where a shark or turtle is captured by a fish line and is facing death.
Today my sweet pinky (See blog about Pinky) was entangled at the coral ‘kind of’ deep in the ocean with a big hook in her beak. Can you imagine yourself hanging there, not able to come up, stuck, innocent and powerless to do something about the situation?

Turtles drown if they don’t get air.

I had swum a long way today and it was amazing and when I came to shore I heard a woman telling my friend T. that there was a baby turtle stuck at the coral. I knew immediately it was Pinky. I swam like a turbo jet (sometimes my friends call me the human turboJ) towards it and saw how she was feeling desperate to get loose. My first attempt to get her loose failed, I didn’t have air to get to her. And something in my mind said that I had to do this right. So I overlooked the situation and knew that I had to make her loose and bring her with me at the same time; knowing that she was in stress this time and might fight to get away (what turtles normally do). She wasn’t looking to be pet this time, I knew that.
The second time I dove I entangled with one hand the line and then I just grabbed her under my arm and together we rised to the surface. She didn’t do anything, she didn’t resist, she just let me help her. You had to see her little head going for air. She was so cute…
The first thing I told her was; “I told you to watch out for those hooks!”

But parentally she is just like me and wants to taste life FULLY and takes the consequences with it.
People were watching me and probably thought I was insane talking to the turtle.
I told them it was ok, she is just relaxing now.
They probably thought now, I was totally nuts…J
Normally a turtle that isn’t Pinky would try to get away, trying to hit your head and all that stuff; but she didn’t. It was as if she pushed herself closer to me. I didn’t even have to do any effort to hold her, she felt safe against me. Then my friend T. came and I held the hook so it would not pull and he cut of that awful nasty line. She was free to go!

I started caressing her shell and talked to her and she just relaxed into it. She didn’t go and just enjoyed the attention…. J
She was not really herself I could tell. That huge hook in her beak must hurt. That falls out after a month and they are ok. Best is to not touch it and to let it there, to make sure the turtle doesn’t bleed so we avoid shark attacks.
Still she would turn around as she usual does and enjoy the massage I was giving her. J

 Here i am massaging Pinky, she is free to swim away, but she loves it so much

I thank God that I was in the right place and in the right moment to be there for Pinky.
I feel like that elephant whisperer...I want to be with the dolphins and turtles and the more you are with them the more they trust. I even believe they tell one another, haha…
That ‘splashing’ thing there is a human being and she is cool. She helps us….
She is one of us…

I love Pinky..I love all animals…doesn’t matter which animal, doesn’t matter which plant , it doesn’t matter which human being…what comes on my path in front of my feet is what God gives me to do, it is that simple. In that moment that is my life purpose…it doesn’t matter what it is…I can be helping an old lady over the street, a beggar in the park, a turtle stuck at the coral….
As this amazing Elephant whisperer Anthony said; “We are all interconnected!”

Animals and plants know when you have a good heart…
At this very moment whales are getting killed in Japan and the spirits of those animals think;
“What are you doing to YOU, to do that to me; because I am you and you are me.”

 Love Tamara rainbow
www.rainbowsheart.com

 

 

My Pinky painting..