After slipping down a muddy railway and trapping itself in a ditch, a wild baby elephant has been rescued.
A passing train of passengers caught sight of the struggling animal on Feb. 17 and asked their conductor to stop so they could help free the calf, Metro UK reports. According to the news outlet, officials say the young elephant had been walking with a herd across along a railway in the northeastern region of Goalpara, India, when it slipped into the muddy ravine.
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Local people give food to the baby elephant stuck in a ditch near the railway track.
More than a dozen of the train passengers came to the elephant’s rescue and comforted the animal by feeding it local vegetation as they waited for a forest official to pull it safely out of the ditch.
Accidents involving elephants are not uncommon -- especially in mud. In Spain's Cabarceno Wildlife Park in 2012, a photographer captured breathtaking images of a mother elephant rescuing her month-old calf, which had become trapped in mud. A similar accident occurred in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley in 2011, when a mother African elephant and her baby were rescued from a pit of rapidly drying mud.
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