The Miraculous Escape of Baby Buff in Chiangmai

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 now 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 October 2006.

I named him Benz to give him some extra horse power to keep up with his feisty mum.

You know the name Benz, don’t you ? From Mercedes Benz.

If it hadn’t been for Baby Buff’s 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 this life that was kicking in her,

that she looked death in the face and turned around.

Breaking her ropes, she bolted down the ramp, through the door

and straight out of the slaughterhouse 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 truck

and came screaming up behind her.

It just so happened that she passed by two front doors to a finance company which were wide open.

So the poor threatened creature swung in there to escape the truck,

finding herself in a large room with computer operators in glass cubicles…

Can you imagine what happened when Buff discovered there was no exit

and she put the brakes on?   

$5000 damage, that’s what!

On the grounds, that amounts to broken glass, flying wood, screaming frantic people

and a huge terrified animal with large horns, lashing out in every direction.

Suddenly a man came running through the door and shot the buffalo twice

in the left shoulder and leg.

She consequently collapsed on the floor in the middle of the glass.    

Her whole head was embedded with broken glass,

her left ear was shredded in strips and bleeding heavily,

she had cuts all over her whole body and she was foaming from the mouth.

After she lay her head down and gave up, the men tied ropes around her horns

and dragged her out onto the street to the pick up, waiting for the slaughterhouse 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.

This kindhearted 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 contacted and immediately prepared and excited

to receive such a clever, lucky buffalo. 

But, we were not really prepared for the sight we first saw lying in the back of that big truck.

They couldn’t have tied the buffalo 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.

It was dangerous work and the staff was afraid to come close to those big horns.

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.

So we all scrambled on top of the truck.

Luckily we had left one very long rope around her neck which we managed to tie to a tree.

This would at least limit to how far she could go.

We all drove off in the truck until she couldn’t reach us anymore.

It took me days to haul her in on the rope, get her closer and closer.

We couldn’t touch her to clean her wounds but at least, she let us hose her down.

By then, the wounded shoulder was heavily swollen with two big gaping holes from the bullets.

We tried to squirt 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 those 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 an alternative.

Then I decided to call the Asian Healing Arts Center and asked if they did buffalo's?

Indeed, Cory, a Reiki practitioner and a vegetarian was delighted to be able to help

if she could, although she had never "done" a buffalo before...

Many other smaller animals, yes, but no buffalo's yet.

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 practitioner's hands.

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 Cory 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 a while 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 came 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 put her forehead close to Cory’s chest and then Cory encircled the buffalo’s head with

her arms. They stood like that for five minutes.

Then the buffalo backed away a step and kneeled down keeping 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 told me;

“You can come closer now. She should be okay.

You can probably 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, Baby Buff 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 bullet is still firmly embedded in her leg bone,

but it healed over and doesn’t seem to bother her at all.

All that remains now 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 our website:

www.animal-sanctuary.chiangmai.chiangrai.com

Bear Hugs to All

Marianne Willemse

Love Animal House- Club & Sanctuary Thailand

To contact us, click here !

2. A Belgian Horse in trouble

When visiting my brother who lives in the beautiful Belgian Ardennes,

I heard that his neighbour was breeding those powerful Belgian horses which are used for hard field labour just as the elephants and buffalos are in Thailand.

My brother informed me that his neighbour was rather sad

because her most beautiful mare had just had a still-birth

and did not want to get up.

So I walked over there, introduced myself as the sister of her neighbour

and asked her if I could see the horse that did not want to get up.

The neighbour said that she was a bit worried because this horse was rather nervous

and did not like strangers at all, and her daughter (who is the horse-owner) was not around.

I managed to convince her to just let me have a look at the horse from a distance.

When I stood at the stable door, I saw that she was indeed lying down and breathing rather heavily.

But then she whinnied which I took as a signal to go in.

She even let me touch her which I did ever so gently with my warm Reiki hands,

going slowly from her head to her powerful shoulders, spine and belly which was rumbling very noisily.

I stayed with her for about one hour without any complaints from the horse,

but with the neighbour looking on less and less nervously from the stable door…

Afterwards, I spent another half hour with the neighbour trying to explain to her

that Reiki is actually such a deeply relaxing treatment

and that I felt that this is what her horse needed.

Then I went back to my brother’s house for dinner and an early night.

The next morning, I got up with the sun at 7.00.

I opened the curtains and to my greatest joy, I saw the horse standing in the field

adjacent to my brother’s garden.

I quickly got dressed and went to say hello.

She whinnied again at me when she saw me and it was a very different,

more powerful sound from the weak one I had heard the day before.

I felt that she was just saying hello to a new friend and that was me.

This certainly was a highlight from my trip

and another wonnnnderful Reiki experience.