The
Miraculous Escape of Baby Buff
“If you have ever loved and been
loved by an animal, then you may already know that animals can
be wise teachers and practiced healers. As teachers, animals
show us how to love unconditionally, regardless of such things
as race, shape, size, age and sex. Animals allow us to relax
our guard and have fun!”
by Marianne Willemse, Director of Love Animal
House Sanctuary
 |
Baby Buff with
her son Baby Benz |
Baby Buff is a water buffalo who has lived
at Love Animal Sanctuary in Thailand since 21st June 2006. She
is called so even though she is around seven years old because
the lawyer, who was involved with her rescue, calls all the
animals he helps ‘his babies’. Here she is with
her son Baby Benz who was born, much to our surprise, on 1st.Oct
2006. I named him Benz to give him some extra horse power to
keep up with his feisty mum.
If it hadn’t been for her brave attempt
to escape death, Benz would never have seen the bright sunny
day he was born on. It could even have been because of him,
because of the life that was kicking in her, that she looked
death in the face and turned around. Breaking her rope, she
bolted down the ramp, through the door and straight out the
gate onto a main city road. She galloped down the road a bit
and possibly to avoid the traffic at her heels, turned into
a housing estate with a row of shop houses on the first street.
By this time the people from the slaughterhouse
were chasing her in a pick up and came screaming up behind her.
It happened that the two front doors were wide open to a finance
company, so the poor threatened creature swung in there to escape
the truck. It was a large room with computer operators in glass
cubicles so you can imagine what happened when Buff discovered
there was no exit and she put the brakes on! $5000 damage, that’s
what! On the ground that amounts to broken glass, flying wood,
screaming frantic people, a huge terrified animal lashing out
in every direction. Suddenly a man came running through the
door and shot the buffalo twice. She collapsed on the floor
in the middle of the glass. She was wounded in the left shoulder
and leg. Her whole head was imbedded with broken glass, her
left ear was shredded in strips and bleeding heavily, she had
cuts all over her whole body; she was foaming from the mouth.
She lay her head down and gave up. Then the men tied ropes around
her horns and dragged her out onto the street with the pick
up, awaiting the slaughter truck to turn up.
During this time, several reporters, a lawyer
who represents animals and the police had turned up. They were
so shocked at what they saw. Then the Chinese owner of the finance
company arrived. He too was shocked when he saw the poor buffalo.
Because of all the damage to his property, he confiscated the
buffalo and said he wished to spare its life. The kind man asked
the lawyer if he knew a safe place for her to heal and stay
the rest of her life. He said he knew just the place!
Love Animal Sanctuary was immediately prepared and excited to
receive such a clever, lucky buffalo. However, we were not prepared
for the sight we first saw lying in the back of the big truck.
They couldn’t have tied her down with more ropes! The
floor was thick with blood. She was grunting and snorting and
extremely angry.
Well, wouldn’t you be after a day like that? My heart
reached out to her. I had to cut all those ropes off her immediately.
Open the doors and set her free, I yelled. Help me get this
poor baby out of this!
It took a long time to cut all the ropes off
her, it was dangerous and the staff was afraid, so we had to
go slow. When she finally jumped on her feet ready to charge
in any direction, we dropped the ramp down. We assumed she would
head out into the field, happy to be free, but instead she made
a u-turn and came back for revenge! Head down, cut off ropes
still tightly woven around her horns, dangling around her face,
she charged the people around the truck. Everybody piled on
top. Luckily we had left one very long rope around her neck
which we managed to tie to a tree so there was a limit to how
far she could go. We all took off in the truck until she couldn’t
reach us. It took me days to haul her in on the rope, get her
closer and closer. We couldn’t touch her to clean her
wound put she let us hose her down. The shoulder was heavily
swollen, two big gaping holes. We squirted the wounds with antiseptic
herbs and powder but after a week the swelling wasn’t
going down and she was limping. We had to get the bullets out.
I was afraid of any rough treatment on her, like tying her down
to get injections, because then she would get afraid and angry
again, so I had to find another alternative.
Then I decided to call the Asian Healing Institute
and asked if they did buffalos? Indeed, Cory, a Reiki healer
and a vegetarian was delighted to be able to help if she could,
although she had never done a buffalo before. Reiki is what
I would call a kind of sub-atomic energy healing where the negative
and positive ions come into balance from the influence of a
higher magnetic force channeled through the healer. I don’t
know how else to describe it, all I can say is, it certainly
worked for Baby Buff!
When Cory arrived Baby Buff was munching grass
under a tree in the field tethered with a 20 meter rope. I asked
if I should make the rope shorter to get her closer to the tree
but Cory said; “Don’t worry, if this works, you
won’t need the rope anymore!” She said it might
take awhile so I could just leave her there with the buffalo
and attend to something else. I thought I would stay and watch,
but after ten minutes of Cory staring at Baby Buff eating grass
I got bored and left.
Half an hour later I got back, just in time,
to see the most amazing thing. Baby Buff had stopped eating
grass and was walking straight to Cory who stood there with
her arms out ready to receive her. Buff placed her forehead
on Cory’s chest and the healer embraced the buffalo’s
head. They stood like that for five minutes. Then the buffalo
backed away a step and kneeled in front of Cory, her bottom
still in the air, like she was paying respect to Cory. I couldn’t
believe what I was seeing. Buff stood like that for a while
until she finally lay down. Then Cory turned and yelled at me;
“Come closer, you can do whatever you want with her now!”
And that was pretty much true. A lady came
to visit an hour after Cory left and she raced out into the
field to hug the buffalo which she had read about in the newspaper
and wanted to donate a new house for. Before I could stop her,
she flung her arms around Baby Buff’s neck and the buffalo
didn’t mind at all. In fact she stood there with a big
grin on her face like, hey, today’s my birthday for the
first time in my life.
That evening I got one bullet out of her shoulder.
She stood very still and let me do it. The other remains firmly
embedded in her leg bone, but it healed over and doesn’t
seem to bother her at all. Now all that remains are a few scars
on the outside, the inside ones have all healed. Baby Buffs
life is full of joy again. Now she shares her life with Boon,
Miracle, Noah (bullocks) and Madonna, our beautiful water buffalo
family, whom she joined after her baby was born. They have many
other friends to hang out with, like Joe the goat, Saddam the
rooster or Gin the talking goose, all residents of Love Animal
Sanctuary where every individual counts.
You can read more articles about other animals
on the Bear Hugs Club website
or join the Bear
Hugs Club