In a typical incident of lending helping hands, a herd of 40 elephants battled for about two hours and rescued a calf from an agricultural well in a village near Hosur on Friday.
The herd which had strayed into villages under Soolagiri panchanyat limits from nearby forests were wreaking havoc in the region for the past two days.
The elephants on Thursday night came to Oddarpalayam and destroyed crops in more than 10 acres in the village and stayed there during the night.
On Friday around 6 am, a one-year-old calf fell into an open agricultural well belonging to Abbaiah, Vice-president of Kanlatti village panchayat.
Talking to Express, Abbaiah said that all the elephants surrounded the well and did not allow public go near it.
The elephants trumpeted loudly and started running helter-skelter in the region after seeing the calf struggling to come out of the well.
Due to thick mist, he said the public also feared to go near the 40-foot well, which was partly dry.
Meanwhile the elephants started pushing mud and other waste available in the farm into the well in a bid to help the calf to climb up the well.
In about two hours the rescue operation’ paid off as the elephants filled the three-fourth of the well with soil and waste. Then some jumbos pulled out the calf with their trunks.
Later the elephants started moving towards Gopasandiram temple area when villagers started bursting crackers to chase them back into the forests.
But the cracker sounds scared the calf, which was not able to run with the herd. Angered by this, the herd turned and started to chase the people, who ran helter-skelter. Forest officials immediately rushed to Gopasandiram area and chased away the animals back into forests.