Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I'm Paul Cavina, and I wrote I bought an elephant
Speaker 2: to find out how to save them for Outside magazine,
Speaker 2: and it's the story of the week.
Speaker 1: Look, I don't really care about animals, but I do
Speaker 1: love a prank, and there aren't a lot of organizations
Speaker 1: professionally dedicated to pranking other than People for the Ethical
Speaker 1: Treatment of Animals. So back in the summer of two thousand,
Speaker 1: I called PETA and asked if there were any cool
Speaker 1: pranks coming up I could join them on. They invited
Speaker 1: me to enactme supermarket in Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington is in
Speaker 1: the heart of chicken raising country. When I got there,
Speaker 1: they gave me this giant chicken suit and told me
Speaker 1: to go inside the supermarket and to fix these little
Speaker 1: stickers to all the raw chicken products. And the sticker
Speaker 1: said warning, this package contains the decomposing corpse of a
Speaker 1: small tortured bird. I went in and tried to put
Speaker 1: as many stickers on packages as I could, which was
Speaker 1: not easy with the fake chicken hands and the lack
Speaker 1: of visibility from the big chicken eyes that were way
Speaker 1: too high for me. And I yelled at my lines
Speaker 1: like give a clock as best as I could, but
Speaker 1: someone started making threatening bocking noises at me, and that's
Speaker 1: when the police came. They started escorting me towards the exit.
Speaker 1: When I got outside, this officer made me stand against
Speaker 1: the wall and started taking pictures of me, some of
Speaker 1: them with my chicken head on. I was nervous that
Speaker 1: these were mugshots, but they were just for the personal
Speaker 1: use of the police officers. So I've done my part
Speaker 1: for the animal movement, but not nearly as much as
Speaker 1: today's guest Paul Kvinta. Writing is hard.
Speaker 3: Who's got that kind of time when you're already busy
Speaker 3: trying to be you all stand so it turns on
Speaker 3: a mic. Maybe the twiddles nap because a journalist trand
Speaker 3: has got in that juble job outories single story. Just listen,
Speaker 3: smart people speak, conversation, film and information. It's a story.
Speaker 1: UK. I once ate a five hundred dollars dinner alone
Speaker 1: at a restaurant called Elnea in Chicago and put it
Speaker 1: down on my expense report for Time Magazine as dinner
Speaker 1: with Bruce Willis. For his article for Outside Magazine, Paul
Speaker 1: Covinta bought an elephant. I cannot imagine what he wrote
Speaker 1: down on his expense report. Paul, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1: It's the second time we've had you on the show. Congratulations.
Speaker 2: Well thanks, I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1: This story is even crazier than the last one. When
Speaker 1: I first read the title I bought an elephant, I
Speaker 1: thought it was like an exaggeration just to get me
Speaker 1: to read the piece, but it is not. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's an understatement because you bought two elephants. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you brag about buying two elephants in the headline?
Speaker 2: I should have.
Speaker 1: So the story starts in Laos and there's a seven
Speaker 1: forty seven that's landed at the airport at midnight bound
Speaker 1: for Dubai and it's picking up some very unusual cargo.
Speaker 2: There were sixteen elephants, and Dubai was putting together a
Speaker 2: new Safari park and they needed elephants. And there are
Speaker 2: a lot of wealthy countries now including the Ua China,
Speaker 2: who are creating new zoos and they need animals for
Speaker 2: those zoos.
Speaker 1: How do you even get elephants on an airplane like
Speaker 1: they would just tear the place up.
Speaker 2: No, So they had some specially made crates and they
Speaker 2: were going to put the elephants in the crates and
Speaker 2: then put the crates on the plane. These elephants had
Speaker 2: been staged outside of the capital of Laos Vntien, and
Speaker 2: this was all going to take place under cover of darkness.
Speaker 2: Those elephants were going to be moved by big trucks
Speaker 2: to the airstrip and put on this plane. That was
Speaker 2: the plan. But you know, as these things go, there
Speaker 2: was there's a lot of you know, dark money floating around.
Speaker 1: This is all illegal, illegal under Laosian law or international law.
Speaker 2: Under Laos law, that's correct. And apparently the Zoo and
Speaker 2: Dubai had sent middlemen to negotiate with these mahoots in
Speaker 2: these elephant owners in Laos and they had, you know,
Speaker 2: reached all sorts of under the table deals. Well, somebody
Speaker 2: didn't get their payments. Somewhere along the line, somebody complained
Speaker 2: about us right, complained about this to officials. We don't
Speaker 2: know exactly what happened, but literally, as this was about
Speaker 2: to go down, suddenly all these officials appear. The elephants
Speaker 2: get confiscated, they don't make it to the airport, and
Speaker 2: everything falls apart, and then the president of Laos makes
Speaker 2: the statement saying we will never part with our elephants,
Speaker 2: and how could this have happened?
Speaker 1: And Laos is like a global hub for wildlife tracking
Speaker 1: like ivory and rhino horn. It is what is going
Speaker 1: on with that country.
Speaker 2: The institutions of Laos aren't particularly strong. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of corruption in the government. And if you have money,
Speaker 2: you can do do a lot of things in Laos.
Speaker 1: It's nearby countries that now have a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And you said that when these countries get money, they
Speaker 1: tend to like build these lavish zoos. Is that something
Speaker 1: you do when you get rich as a society, like
Speaker 1: build the world's tallest building and build zoos?
Speaker 2: I guess so, I don't know, or send people to
Speaker 2: outer space, right right? China is building a lot of zoos,
Speaker 2: a lot of aquariums. People have disposable income, they want
Speaker 2: to you know, different kinds of entertainment and zoos and
Speaker 2: aquariums would fall into that category.
Speaker 1: Okay. And the reason there are all these elephants in
Speaker 1: Laos that are kind of available is this unintended consequence
Speaker 1: of a law to protect the environment there, right.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Laos traces its history to the fourteenth century kingdom of
Speaker 2: lang Zeng, which means land of a million elephants. So
Speaker 2: there's always been a ton of elephants in Laos. They
Speaker 2: are just a celebrated species there historically, but now the
Speaker 2: country has only eight hundred elephants. Half of those are wild,
Speaker 2: half are domesticated. In twenty sixteen, Lao ban the export
Speaker 2: of unprocessed timber and elephants and their mohots had really
Speaker 2: been the backbone of that industry. So when that was
Speaker 2: banned and suddenly you had all of these unemployed elephants
Speaker 2: and unemployed mohots, So that's.
Speaker 1: Been one of the hoots. Are the people that have
Speaker 1: for I guess centuries trained elephants to do things including
Speaker 1: logging which is now correct, which is now illegal, to
Speaker 1: protect the forests or.
Speaker 2: To protect the forest And yes, as you say, the
Speaker 2: irony is that those owners are much more you know,
Speaker 2: there's an incentive for them to now sell their elephants,
Speaker 2: and so they're doing it to these people in China
Speaker 2: who are trying to create these zoos.
Speaker 1: And I imagine the mohots, the people that train these
Speaker 1: elephants are not happy about having their way of life
Speaker 1: destroyed and having to sell these elephants because they're like
Speaker 1: spiritual creatures in Laos.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: As part of this Buddhist belief, people have thirty two souls,
Speaker 2: and the only other creatures that also have thirty two
Speaker 2: souls or elephants.
Speaker 1: I don't even think I have one soul thirty two.
Speaker 1: That's exhausting just to think about how many souls do
Speaker 1: you think you have? I have?
Speaker 2: You know, I've got a lot, Joel, five hundred souls.
Speaker 1: You've got a hundred lives to live through all these things.
Speaker 1: I have not done reporting like this. Okay, So they
Speaker 1: have these sixteen elephants that are not going to Dubai.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of free time in their hands
Speaker 1: now as elephants. What are they going to do with them?
Speaker 2: These elephants end up at this wonderful place in Laos
Speaker 2: called the Elephant Conservation Center, and.
Speaker 1: This is like a forest somewhere. Can you pay to
Speaker 1: go there? You can?
Speaker 2: You can, Tourists can go, and in fact, they were
Speaker 2: there when I spent time there.
Speaker 1: Well, it's starting to sound a lot like a zoo.
Speaker 2: That's funny. It's not caged in at all like a zoo.
Speaker 2: They basically live in the forest, but they always keep
Speaker 2: tabs on them. And if you're a paying tourist, you
Speaker 2: can go and you stay in this sort of not
Speaker 2: fancy lodge and and you can you know, get guided
Speaker 2: out into the forest and where you can see these elephants,
Speaker 2: you know, drinking at the riverside or the mood is
Speaker 2: bathing them in the river. So it's not a zoo,
Speaker 2: it's not completely wild either, it's somewhere in between.
Speaker 1: So it's run by this young kind of American woman
Speaker 1: who's twenty five, and she has this sort of crazy
Speaker 1: idea right.
Speaker 2: Right, So her name is Chrissantha Pinto. She is a
Speaker 2: scientist from the United States. And so what she wants
Speaker 2: to do, or wanted to do, is, can we take
Speaker 2: these elephants we have here at the Elephant Conservation Center.
Speaker 2: These are all, you know, formerly these are all domestic elephants.
Speaker 2: They don't know each other for the most part. Can
Speaker 2: we put five of them together and create a herd?
Speaker 2: Now in the wild jowl an elephant herd is made
Speaker 2: up of adult females and they're young, so no one's
Speaker 2: ever really tried to just sort of slap together a
Speaker 2: herd of elephants that don't otherwise know each other. People
Speaker 2: have attempted in other Asian countries to introduce domestic elephants
Speaker 2: into the wild, and none of those efforts have really succeeded.
Speaker 1: The Queen of Thailand did it, right, That's.
Speaker 2: Right, she did. They put together, you know, a handful
Speaker 2: of elephants, put them out in the wild, and these
Speaker 2: elephants suddenly just you know, roamed everywhere and did not
Speaker 2: stay together as or herd, and you're just.
Speaker 1: Like attacked people's houses and stuff.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. Yeah, So that's one of the concerns is
Speaker 2: that there'll be this human elephant conflict. They'll trample crops,
Speaker 2: they'll run over houses, they'll stomp on people. Chrysantha Pento
Speaker 2: at the Elephant Conservation Center in Lause. When she decided
Speaker 2: how am I going to put together an elephant heard
Speaker 2: she started with three of the elephants that had been
Speaker 2: bound for Dubai. One was an older female and one
Speaker 2: was a young a young elephant, a young male elephant,
Speaker 2: a five year old and another adult who sort of
Speaker 2: served as the doting aunt. So Chrissantha started with those
Speaker 2: and then she added another female, and then she also
Speaker 2: added a fifth adult female elephant and these were the
Speaker 2: This was the herd that she watched for months there
Speaker 2: at the Elephant Conservation Center. And you know, Joel, all
Speaker 2: this drama unfolds inside this elephant herd. You know, the
Speaker 2: three elephants don't like one of the other females. They
Speaker 2: you know, they they kick at her and whatnot. And
Speaker 2: then when the little guy, when the little elephant, the
Speaker 2: little male elephant, gets upset, what all the females do
Speaker 2: their mothering instinct is to reach their trunks in uh
Speaker 2: to his growing area, because then they can somehow by
Speaker 2: doing that, discern what his stress level is. So Chris,
Speaker 2: every time, every time the little guy got upset and
Speaker 2: started crying, you know, these four mother figures would come
Speaker 2: in and you know, touches growing with their trunks.
Speaker 1: Wait, they like wrap their trunks around the young elephant's
Speaker 1: penis to see if he is upset.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 4: And when they did this, Chrisophatch, that was awesome. You know,
Speaker 4: this this meant that they cared, you know, and they
Speaker 4: you know that this was another one more clue that
Speaker 4: they were going to stick together in the wild hopefully.
Speaker 1: So this is not awesome. This is going to send
Speaker 1: these elephants into elephant therapy for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: But does this work with humans?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Do we not shy that?
Speaker 2: I have no idea. My mother certainly didn't do this
Speaker 2: with me, Joel. If that's what you're.
Speaker 1: Asking, your trip to this elephant conservation center sounds kind
Speaker 1: of amazing. First of all, you're meeting all these mahoots
Speaker 1: and what are they like?
Speaker 2: So uh, these five elephants that we set free into
Speaker 2: non Fui National Park, each of them came with a
Speaker 2: mahout that had known these elephants pretty much all their lives.
Speaker 2: Almost These men were amazed, and they were all guys.
Speaker 2: They were amazing. I'll give you an idea.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: There was another a British guy, a guy named Mike Foulshaw,
Speaker 2: who also worked at the Elephant Conservation Center. There were
Speaker 2: times when I was with this group of people, me, Mike, Chysantha,
Speaker 2: the Mohoots, the elephants, when Mike would say, well, the
Speaker 2: GPS says we should go this way, and the mohots.
Speaker 2: One of the moots said I've got a GPS. I've
Speaker 2: got two and he pointed to his head and he
Speaker 2: pointed to his heart, and he would say, yeah, we're not,
Speaker 2: we're not. We're not listening to your GPS, Mike Felshot,
Speaker 2: We're going that way, you know. And these guys just knew.
Speaker 1: And they'd be right, like he'd say it. We took
Speaker 1: an hour, and they'd get there in like ten minutes, right,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: I remember the first day we spent all day out
Speaker 2: in the wilderness. We'd come back to camp. These guys,
Speaker 2: you know, with their pocket knives, had created a table, chairs,
Speaker 2: a whole lean to to cover up all of our tents.
Speaker 2: They had gone into the river and caught all these
Speaker 2: frogs for us to eat for dinner.
Speaker 1: Dinner that night.
Speaker 2: I mean, these guys are just incredible.
Speaker 1: So they walked in with no food and they made
Speaker 1: you a whole like dinner. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay. And
Speaker 1: the mohots are like flying through this place, and you're
Speaker 1: struggling to keep up with them, I assume.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me and Chrysantha actually are having a hard time
Speaker 2: keeping up with these guys. They're they're you know, climbing
Speaker 2: up you know, these really steep hills. Were halfway up
Speaker 2: this cliff, and Chrissantha realizes she has a leech in
Speaker 2: her groin and she's she screams out, Ah, it looks
Speaker 2: like I'm on my period. So she was upset, and
Speaker 2: you know, I had leeches all over me, and it
Speaker 2: was it was tough going, that's for sure, all right.
Speaker 1: So it goes pretty well. It seems like with the
Speaker 1: elephants in the conservation center.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chrissantha saw things that she thought was was quite hopeful.
Speaker 2: The elephants were mostly staying together after I left. I
Speaker 2: later learned during that three month span when I spoke
Speaker 2: with Chrysantha, that male elephant started developing a relationship with
Speaker 2: some of these female elephants, which again she considered a
Speaker 2: very good thing. So it went pretty well.
Speaker 1: It's like love Islands for elephants.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is. I should have titled my
Speaker 2: story love Island for Elephants.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, you I should have told your story. I
Speaker 1: bought two elephants. When we come back, Paul's going to
Speaker 1: a zoo in China to try to buy his elephants.
Speaker 1: But first today's sponsor has an incredible offer on some
Speaker 1: ivory tusks. Okay, So then you go to China to
Speaker 1: this city kun Ming, and you've gone there to go
Speaker 1: look at a zoo, right.
Speaker 2: That's right. So after I spent time with on this
Speaker 2: experiment of reintroducing these domestic elephants into the wild, I
Speaker 2: connected up with an investigative filmmaker named Karl Aman. He's
Speaker 2: a Swiss guy and he has documented different sorts of
Speaker 2: animal trafficking all over the world. What's he like that
Speaker 2: has these sort of sleepy eyelids? And he the person
Speaker 2: who comes to mind to me when I think of
Speaker 2: Carl as Peter Falk playing Colombo, got it, this kind
Speaker 2: of frumpy guy who maybe you don't expect a lot
Speaker 2: out of, you don't realize he's a really good investigator.
Speaker 2: And Carl had identified two different business groups. One was Chinese,
Speaker 2: another one was Laotian, and these two groups had been
Speaker 2: steadily trafficking elephants out of Laos into China. And so
Speaker 2: at one point Carl contacted the Laotian company pretending to
Speaker 2: be a Western man who was going to start a
Speaker 2: new zoo in Guangzhou, China. And so he asked these
Speaker 2: this Laotian business, you know, how much can you get
Speaker 2: me elephants? And how much would I be paying for them,
Speaker 2: and so he started this relationship with this Laotian company
Speaker 2: and what he learned from them was that very recently
Speaker 2: they had just sent elephants, you know, illegally out of
Speaker 2: Laos into China, and Carl learned which zoo they had
Speaker 2: gone to, and if we could confirm that those elephants
Speaker 2: were at that zoo, we would have documented this illegal
Speaker 2: trade from Laos to China of these elephants.
Speaker 1: So I know that Carl is pretending that he's starting
Speaker 1: a zoo in China. Are you there as do you
Speaker 1: tell them you're a journalist, Do you tell them that
Speaker 1: you're working with Carl or what do you tell them
Speaker 1: you're there for?
Speaker 2: Carl and I are basically working under cover. We are
Speaker 2: pretending to be a pair of Western businessmen who are
Speaker 2: starting a zoo in Guangzhou, China, And so we are
Speaker 2: out looking to purchase elephants, and you know, we've been
Speaker 2: told that this particular zoo has some elephants, and we
Speaker 2: want to see if we can buy some of those
Speaker 2: elephants and how much they'll they'll they're going to charge us.
Speaker 2: And so I went with Carl to this zoo and
Speaker 2: that was a really trippy thing. Do you know much
Speaker 2: about Chinese zoo's Joel?
Speaker 1: If I had a dollar for every time someone asked
Speaker 1: me that question, you know, no, what's a Chinese zoo?
Speaker 2: Like a Chinese zoo, the relationship between the paying customers
Speaker 2: and the animals is quite different from what we have
Speaker 2: here in the United States. So, for example, there would
Speaker 2: be these enclosures of predators, big big enclosures of tigers
Speaker 2: and lions and bears and oh my, and you could
Speaker 2: buy a ticket, and Carl and I did this. We
Speaker 2: bought a ticket and a little mini bus can drive
Speaker 2: you through these enclosures and you can buy food skewers
Speaker 2: of raw chicken or just a live chicken, and you
Speaker 2: can hold it out.
Speaker 1: Stick it through.
Speaker 2: By the way, these little buses they're covered in wire mesh.
Speaker 2: Why because you're going to drive into where the lions
Speaker 2: and the tigers live. And then you can stick your
Speaker 2: little skewer through a hole and it's got raw chicken
Speaker 2: on it. And you could buy a whole cow where
Speaker 2: this hydraulic lift would would then send the cow down
Speaker 2: a ramp and the tiger cow a live cow, and
Speaker 2: forty tigers would just like descend on this cow. And
Speaker 2: rip it to shreds. So that's just that that's a
Speaker 2: Chinese zoo.
Speaker 1: Yeah wait, so it's like a zoo, but it's also
Speaker 1: like an amusement park. What is this?
Speaker 2: I would call it an interactive zoo. So with the elephants,
Speaker 2: and this is a very popular part of any Chinese zoo.
Speaker 2: You go see the elephant show, and so these five
Speaker 2: elephants come trotting out and they're wearing these really fancy outfits.
Speaker 1: What's a fancy elephant outfit?
Speaker 2: You know, it's got decked out and robes and spangles
Speaker 2: and mangles and all sorts of glittery whatnots, and these
Speaker 2: mohoots or these elephant trainers come out there with them,
Speaker 2: and then they roll out the soccer ball and the
Speaker 2: elephants play soccer, you know. And then they bring out
Speaker 2: the paints and the easels and the elephant's paint pictures.
Speaker 2: They've been taught how to paint a picture. And or
Speaker 2: then someone will volunteer from the crowd to come out.
Speaker 2: Someone will go out and the elephant will give it
Speaker 2: a quote unquote massage where the person lays down the
Speaker 2: elephant and take its big giant foot and kind of
Speaker 2: tap along the back of the person, and the elephants
Speaker 2: will dance and they'll spin around and they'll just do
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff. And then after the show's over,
Speaker 2: we just kind of wander backstage go to the elephant
Speaker 2: enclosure area. When someone says, well, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: We explained, and we have a woman there working with us,
Speaker 2: traveling with us, who's serving as our interpreter. Her name
Speaker 2: is b. B explains that these are these two Western
Speaker 2: businessmen starting a zoo in Guangzhou. They want to see
Speaker 2: the elephants, and people say, oh, yeah, have a look.
Speaker 2: So we go back and we there's these eleven elephants
Speaker 2: in this enclosure and there's a guy back there who's
Speaker 2: training them. So we watch this guy teach an elephant
Speaker 2: how to shoot baskets with a basketball. We start talking
Speaker 2: to him at length and he starts telling us, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, these elephants came from this place, in this place,
Speaker 2: in this place. Not only that, we developed a relationship
Speaker 2: with this guy going forward, and we were able to
Speaker 2: learn things like, for example, as I pointed out earlier,
Speaker 2: it's illegal to sell an elephant a Laosian elephant to
Speaker 2: export it out of the country. So what was happening
Speaker 2: was false lease papers were being drawn up and it
Speaker 2: was being made to appear that these elephants would be
Speaker 2: least to this zoo in China for ten years or whatever.
Speaker 2: But in fact this guy was able to tell us that, Yeah, basically,
Speaker 2: that's all bullshit. Like you know, when you fork over
Speaker 2: your twenty thousand or eighty thousand dollars for your elephant,
Speaker 2: that's it. You know that elephant's not coming back.
Speaker 1: Wait, it's legal to lease an elephant, but not to
Speaker 1: buy one. I think that's weird.
Speaker 2: I think that's the case.
Speaker 1: That's a weird loophole. Yeah, of elephant buying. Yeah, then
Speaker 1: you travel to Boten, which is a town in Laos
Speaker 1: right on the border with China. And why are you
Speaker 1: going there?
Speaker 2: We're told that Boten is the crossing point these elephants
Speaker 2: are being shipped out of the country. And what we
Speaker 2: learn is that sometimes these elephants travel by truck out
Speaker 2: of the country and they actually go through the Laotian
Speaker 2: and then the Chinese border agents, and you know, through
Speaker 2: fake documents and such, they can get the elephants out.
Speaker 2: Other times when that isn't an option for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: these mohoots will walk walk, you know, trains of elephants
Speaker 2: through the bushes, kind of around the proper border crossing.
Speaker 1: What is that city?
Speaker 2: Like, Boten is a crazy, crazy place. At one point
Speaker 2: it was a gambling mecca. It was, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of a red light district and all these Chinese tourists
Speaker 2: would go there and it thrived for a while, but
Speaker 2: then I think someone got killed and there was a
Speaker 2: bunch of fishy stuff and then it kind of died
Speaker 2: as a town. But when I arrived, new Chinese money
Speaker 2: was coming into it, but it was very much a
Speaker 2: wild West place.
Speaker 1: It's like the Nevada of totally of the East. Like
Speaker 1: if you have a lot of money in China and
Speaker 1: you want a crazy bachelor party weekend, you go to
Speaker 1: Post exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so when I went there, there was a lot
Speaker 2: of unoccupied tall buildings. There was like no one in
Speaker 2: the town, but building was happening like crazy. There was
Speaker 2: cranes all over the place, earth movers they were blowing
Speaker 2: up hillsides to create flat space. I mean there was
Speaker 2: just dust everywhere. And in the midst of all this,
Speaker 2: there was this one theater that Chinese tourists would come
Speaker 2: over in buses and go to this show and it
Speaker 2: was a drag show. This place was called Club Excellente.
Speaker 2: It had neon and you know, it was just kind
Speaker 2: of this really sad looking place.
Speaker 1: Did you go to the show?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I did go to the show.
Speaker 1: I did go to the show. I have to go
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: In the parking lot of clubex the very large parking
Speaker 2: lot of Club Excellente, there's two elephants basically living in
Speaker 2: the parking lot. There's a male elephant and a female elephant.
Speaker 2: So late in the day, the mahout goes into the
Speaker 2: patch of forest to get his elephant and he walks
Speaker 2: those two elephants back and what he's that half mile
Speaker 2: there's just dump trucks and earth movers and they're literally
Speaker 2: making explosions, these construction crews to blow up these hills
Speaker 2: to create flat space to build more buildings. So these
Speaker 2: poor two elephants are walking across this moonscape of red
Speaker 2: destroyed earth. And they come back and they get to
Speaker 2: the parking lot and the hoot sort of chains their
Speaker 2: their them by their feet to the parking lot and
Speaker 2: then you know it's dusk. These Chinese buses arrive, they
Speaker 2: disgorge all these tourists. The tourists are happy, you know,
Speaker 2: they're getting their photos taken with the elephants. The drag
Speaker 2: queens come out and they you know, they're entertaining the
Speaker 2: these Chinese tourists. And and then at a certain point
Speaker 2: it's time for the show. So everyone goes inside for
Speaker 2: the show, the drag show, and for two hours. And
Speaker 2: then when they come out, it's dark. Uh, someone builds
Speaker 2: a bonfire, and then you know, there's dancing and techno music,
Speaker 2: and then there's these giant conga lines that are whinding
Speaker 2: around the parking lot, whining around the elephants. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just completely insane. And these two poor elephants, these
Speaker 2: are two wild creatures and they're having to live like this,
Speaker 2: and so the elephants are there as a further means
Speaker 2: to entertain these these these Chinese tourists.
Speaker 1: So at this point, are you still undercover as elephant buyers.
Speaker 2: Carl had said to me, you're going to meet the
Speaker 2: mahout whose family owns these two elephants living miserable lives
Speaker 2: in this parking lot of a drag show. If you
Speaker 2: get an opportunity, I want you to talk to this
Speaker 2: guy about buying those two elephants so that we can
Speaker 2: have them move to the Elephant Conservation Center and allows
Speaker 2: to live a better life.
Speaker 1: What how crazy? What do you what's your reaction to that?
Speaker 1: When he asked you to buy an elephant or two elephants?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it was just there had been you know,
Speaker 2: we had just done this whole undercover thing and you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how spies do it, man, but you know,
Speaker 2: so for him to actually ask me to do that, yeah,
Speaker 2: it seemed a little weird, but it did seem any
Speaker 2: weirder than anything he and I had done to that point.
Speaker 2: And it certainly didn't seem anything weirder than I had
Speaker 2: already seen in all these Chinese zoos, and as I said,
Speaker 2: I was at at least three of them, and then
Speaker 2: when I got to ten and saw what these elephants
Speaker 2: were living through, it made perfect sense that if someone
Speaker 2: needed to buy these elephants and get them out of there.
Speaker 1: So you're talking to this mahoot about trying to buy
Speaker 1: these two elephants from him? What's the asking price for
Speaker 1: an elephant?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How high were you allowed to bid.
Speaker 2: The mahoot wanted one hundred and ten thousand dollars for
Speaker 2: the elephants.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of the normal elephant price? You know?
Speaker 2: Working on the story, I saw prices for elephants ranging
Speaker 2: from twenty thousand dollars for an adult male to two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars for a much prized elephant calf.
Speaker 1: Oh the babies go for more.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, because you can teach them more tricks.
Speaker 2: They're going to live longer. So yeah, the babies were
Speaker 2: super super important in this, in this illegal trade. You know,
Speaker 2: once we realized that the guy was open to it,
Speaker 2: then Carl got with the guy and began the real
Speaker 2: work of the deal, and then it came you know,
Speaker 2: then we started the gofund me page. I was at
Speaker 2: the very the very beginning, is Paul, you're going to
Speaker 2: bout ten ask this guy if he would tell me
Speaker 2: of these elephants.
Speaker 1: That's kind of you're more of an elephant broker, really, I'm.
Speaker 2: An elephants middleman, Joel, get it right.
Speaker 1: But Carl pulled this off, like he raised the money
Speaker 1: or paid for part of it. He moved them into
Speaker 1: the elephant conservation center where you started. That's right, right,
Speaker 1: every part of this story is shocking. I know so
Speaker 1: little about the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Paul Kevint, a two time guest, you wrote, I bought
Speaker 1: an elephant to find out how to save them for outside.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having the guts to return after what
Speaker 1: we did to you the first time.
Speaker 2: Well thanks, Joel. Yeah, yeah it did. It did request
Speaker 2: some bravery on my part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've learned to be nicer a little bit. I'm
Speaker 1: worried that we've been unfair to Chinese zoos. To clarify,
Speaker 1: let me just say that American zoos are horrible places too,
Speaker 1: not just the small local tiger king joints, but our
Speaker 1: major La San Diego zoos too. They're so awful for
Speaker 1: the animals there that a huge portion of the animals
Speaker 1: are actually given antidepressants every day, Like more of the
Speaker 1: animals there than the human beings who are in La
Speaker 1: and San Diego. If you want to see animals, just
Speaker 1: go see them in the wild or the poultry section
Speaker 1: from the Acme supermarket in Wilmington, Delaware. I really did
Speaker 1: learn nothing from Peta.
Speaker 3: At the end of the show, what's next for Joel Stein.
Speaker 3: Maybe he'll take a nap poker Round Online.
Speaker 1: Our show is produced by Joey fish Ground, Mola Board
Speaker 1: and Nishavenka. It was edited by Lydia jen Kapp. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Amanda kay Wang and our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Catharinald Cherradah. Our theme song was produced by Jonathan Colton.
Speaker 1: A special thanks to my coach Vicky Merrick and my
Speaker 1: consulting producer Laurence Alasnik. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein and this is story
Speaker 1: of the week. How much would an elephant that can
Speaker 1: fly go for?
Speaker 2: Fly like a seven forty seven on its way to
Speaker 2: Dubai and I'm more like Dumbo. Yeah, you're probably looking
Speaker 2: at a few million for that.