A sad video posted Monday got bittersweet reactions as netizens commented on an elephant that bent down to knock on his keeper’s coffin and say goodbye to his closest friend.
Somjai Chuenprasaeng, 65, died unexpectedly when a speeding pickup truck drove off the road and hit the elderly man as he was relaxing in his front yard in the southern province of Surat Thani.
The video clip shows Plai Panom, a 20-year-old male elephant, approach and kneel down in front of the wooden coffin containing the body of Somjai on Monday.
Plai Panom, with Somjai’s son sitting on his back, knocks on the top of the coffin as if to let his keeper know that he is there to pay his respects after the 10 years they spent together.
The son, Pramote Chuenprasaeng, 43, told Thai PBS about the sweet, sad moment outside the family’s home. The family had not intended to invite the elephant, which was usually kept in the jungle five kilometers away, but the elephant had other ideas.
Pramote explained that, after his father’s body was returned from the hospital to the family home for the funeral, he went to check on the elephant and found it missing.
He searched for Plai Panom and found him nearby, where the post he had ripped out of the ground to escape had gotten caught on a tree and made it impossible for him to move further.
He said that the elephant smelled him as if to check if it was Somjai. Unsure of what to do, he rode the elephant bank to the family home to try and keep him calm.
When they arrived, the funeral was happening and the elephant immediately went to the coffin, as if he could sense his keeper was inside. He smelled the coffin and knocked on it before kneeling down to say his goodbyes.
Pramote said that many people at the funeral wept openly when they saw the display put on by the elephant.
He commented about how much his father had loved Plai Panom, and he vowed to keep the pachyderm with him as his father would have wanted. He promised to never sell the sweet creature and keep it as a family member until death.
