The sad story of Nasip
Nasip was an orphaned gibbon brought up from a
baby on a rubber estate in Pahang, then still Malaya.
Nasip ran free and had to be taught to climb, by the manager of the plantation, by climbing trees so show how it was done.
On his retirement it was decided Nasip would be
better off joining some other gibbons at the Zoo near Kuala Lumpur since Nasip had no inclination
to integrate back into the wild.
The gibbons already at the zoo, all newcomers, had a small
island in the middle of a river with three trees and as the other three or four
gibbons were from homes where they had not been taught to climb, they marvelled at Nasip immediately swinging freely about the trees and soon caught on that this is what gibbons do.
Nasip lived there happily for a while until one
day all the gibbons were found dead.
An arsenic compound, presumably sodium arsenite used for
weed killing, had leaked from storage and leached into the river, came down
stream and the gibbons having drunk from the river water were killed.
A similar event occurred elsewhere when some wild elephants
discovered buried drums of the same stuff and drank it with the inevitable
happening.
Maybe nowadays there is sufficient control to prevent this.
Mek Yah the elephant
Speaking of elephants, during the insurgency in
Malaya following WW2, an interesting story concerns one called Mek Yah with a happy ending.
Mek Yah had been working for 20 years for the
Government of Kedah carrying stores for district Officers, Police etc. to the
back-blocks kampongs which were inaccessible by road.
In 1952 she was carrying
police and stores in the jungle one day when she walked into a bandit
ambush in a terrorist infested area of the Temenggor Valley at the height of the insurgency. The elephant behind her was
killed instantly, along with two policemen.
Mek Yah, which is the name of this elephant, received a burst of
Bren–gun bullets along her back but managed to plunge through the ambush with her mahout.
The mahout was the Malay you see sitting on her neck in the picture. He had one bullet pass clean through him. Mek Yah and the mahout spent some months in hospital and recovered, but Mek Yah didn’t feel happy about things and went back to the jungle to live with wild elephants. Nothing was seen or heard of her for three years until in 1955 some Malays not far from Cheroh Estate in Raub, Pahang, saw an elephant which they guessed was not a wild one. They reported it to the Game Warden. He thought that it might be Mek Yah and sent to Kedah for the former mahout. He went straight up to Mek Yah and they were soon great friends again. As they left on their way back to Kedah they passed Cheroh Estate and hence a few photographs.
Mek Yah was recognised from the bullet wounds along her back, long since healed, and had emerged at Kuala Lipis approaching a Sikh officer in a friendly manner and accepting a drink from a bucket of water. A police party under an officer was detailed to escort her back on foot to Kedah having stopped the night at Cheroh Estate and been suitably fed. The whole party then continued North West, over the main mountain range and back to Kedah. Later, on retirement from working, Mek Yah entered the zoo near Kuala Lumpur and gave rides to children.
A report in the link below appeared in the Straits Times, 9th December 1955.
Govt. $3,000 for elephant shot by bandits
The mahout was the Malay you see sitting on her neck in the picture. He had one bullet pass clean through him. Mek Yah and the mahout spent some months in hospital and recovered, but Mek Yah didn’t feel happy about things and went back to the jungle to live with wild elephants. Nothing was seen or heard of her for three years until in 1955 some Malays not far from Cheroh Estate in Raub, Pahang, saw an elephant which they guessed was not a wild one. They reported it to the Game Warden. He thought that it might be Mek Yah and sent to Kedah for the former mahout. He went straight up to Mek Yah and they were soon great friends again. As they left on their way back to Kedah they passed Cheroh Estate and hence a few photographs.
Mek Yah was recognised from the bullet wounds along her back, long since healed, and had emerged at Kuala Lipis approaching a Sikh officer in a friendly manner and accepting a drink from a bucket of water. A police party under an officer was detailed to escort her back on foot to Kedah having stopped the night at Cheroh Estate and been suitably fed. The whole party then continued North West, over the main mountain range and back to Kedah. Later, on retirement from working, Mek Yah entered the zoo near Kuala Lumpur and gave rides to children.
A report in the link below appeared in the Straits Times, 9th December 1955.
Govt. $3,000 for elephant shot by bandits
