The seriously injured were placed in the lorries to be taken to the hospital. Those nearly dead of starvation and thirst were given food and water at once. The young, dying because their mothers had been killed, got special attention. A large cage was reserved for orphans. It was rapidly filled with as strange a crowd of babies as ever came together in one place - infant elephants, rhinos, wobbly little antelopes, lion cubs, and fluffy little monkeys. The men went down into the elephant pits, rooted out the poisoned stakes, put them in a pile and burned them. One wall of each pit was broken down so that if an animal fell in, it could climb out. The rescuers went from gap to gap of the mile-long thorn fence and collected every wire snare. They broke up every devilish trap - the ‘drop spear’ set in a tree and triggered so that it would fall upon an animal passing below; the crossbow so arranged in a tree that just a touch of an animal’s foot to the trigger-line in the grass would bring a poisoned arrow plunging down into its back; the cruel spiked wheel that would let an elephant’s foot in but not out and poachers could then take their time removing his tusks and tail, then leave him to starve to death; the ‘ant trap’ set on the side of an ant hill so that the angry, two-inch-long ants would swarm over the trapped animal and devour it, after which the tusks could be more easily removed; the ‘crippler’ that when stepped on would fly up and break the animal’s leg, making it impossible for him to escape the poachers - all the infernal devices that a diseased imagination could invent to inflict pain and death.
