Beware wild elephants.
Actually, beware three wild elephants seen storming around a monastery in the Oather Quarter of Bago Region early Saturday morning, the Voice reported.
One man, identified as 46-year-old U Soe Lwin, was injured in the pre-dawn rampage and sent to Bago Hospital.
The presence of the enormous animals provoked panic in the area, a 50-year-old woman told the Voice.
“Residents are running around as they heard that wild elephants are coming in the early morning,” she was quoted as saying. “We are watching out for those elephants and trying to drive them away into the forest.”
Myanmar’s wild elephants periodically emerge to stir up some trouble, mainly as a result of loss of habitat. They have nowhere else to go.
And neither to the people they are encountering.
Earlier this year, residents of a remote village were forced to live in trees due to the very real threat of being trampled.
While white elephants are considered signs of good fortune, the majority of the country’s pachyderms were used in the logging industry.
But a ban on certain exports had led to a decline in the trade and, according to an article in the New York Times, elephants are facing an “unemployment” crisis.
