PHNOM TAMAO, Cambodia – "I really thought he would never make it," said Nick Marx, stroking Chhouk's trunk with a sense of pride and affection. "He was seriously injured. He was extremely young, emaciated and very, very sick."
Chhouk, a bull elephant now 5 years old, was found in the Cambodian jungle in 2007, alone and close to death, his left front foot mangled by a poacher's trap.
Marx, the Director of Wildlife Rescue and Care at the Wildlife Alliance, a conservation group, was one of the first to the scene, nursing Chhouk in the jungle for a week. "I stayed with him, slept beside him, hand-fed him everything he ate.”
Chhouk was taken to the Cambodian government's Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center, outside Phnom Penh, and nursed back to health. "The damage was severe," Marx says. "He's lost six to eight inches of his leg."
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/04/8633536-wounded-elephant-walks-again-thanks-to-jumbo-sized-false-foot