She knows the sound of my motorbike…

…even when I’m still really far away,” said Jon. “She will start calling out for me before I’ve turned down the road.”

Jon has been Mosha’s mahout since she was two years old (now she is five). When she was seven months old, and walking with her mother in the forest near the Thai/Burmese border, Mosha stepped on a landmine. She lost the bottom half of her front right leg and was left with a stump. Friends of the Asian Elephant hospital took Mosha in and have since made a prosthesis for her (which she gamely wears, but does not enjoy. It’s hot and she fiddles with the buckles when it’s on, even though it does help her walk). That said, it’s Mosha’s relationship with her mahout, Jon, who is twenty-six-years old and with her almost 24 hours a day, every day of the week, that blows me away. I…