Fang Ye and his team got off the plane at 9 a.m. and it was almost 10 a.m. by the time they arrived at the rescue center.
Getting the elephant into a cage, hoisting it onto the truck a few times, securing the transport cage and loading the food took close to four hours in total.
That's what behavioral training is for!
They started training two months in advance, getting the elephant familiar with the process of entering the transport cage. Today, when it was time for the real transport, the elephant walked into the cage on its own and cooperated with the animal keepers, saving a lot of trouble.
To cross the sea, they had to take a ferry across the Qiongzhou Strait, where only the driver was allowed to wait in the vehicle; everyone else had to check in and board from the passenger terminal.
Fang Ye and his colleagues lined up to enter the passenger cabin through the people's passage, while on the other side was the vehicles' entry, with trucks and cars slowly driving in.