
In a village, deep in the jungles of Thailand, a baby elephant is offered a piece of fruit. Born into captivity, she has lived in the village with elephant trainers, called mahouts, since she first came into the world only two years ago. She is trusting of the villagers, the only humans she has ever known.
Delicately, she reaches for the fruit with her tiny, wrinkled, grey trunk. Her large round feet, attached to four stubby baby elephant legs, move gently across the earth. The fruit is held just out of her reach, forcing her to move forward, unaware that each step brings her closer to the ultimate betrayal and seven days of torture that will shake her to her very core.
She is still growing and is not much taller than the villagers who have surreptitiously moved in to surround her. As she steps forward, two men suddenly toss a noose made of thick, heavy rope around her neck. Startled, she attempts to back out of the noose but it is too late, the trap has been sprung and there is no escape.
The villagers scramble to avoid her thrashing trunk and panicked struggles to escape. She screams in fear, but her calls go unanswered, her traumatized mother having been removed from the village in anticipation of this day. She is powerful, but she is no match for the dozens of villagers mightily yanking on the noose that slices ever deeper into the delicate flesh of her neck.
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