野生ゾウ、タイ民家の壁突き破って台所あさる　住民「もう慣れた」

【バンコクＡＦＰ＝時事】タイ中部フアヒンの民家の台所に２０日未明、野生のゾウが食べ物を求めてやって来た。住民によると、先月このゾウが台所の壁を破壊したという。（写真はタイ中部フアヒンの民家の台所に食べ物を求めてやって来たゾウ。フェイスブックの投稿から）
　ゾウが訪れたのは、キッティチャイ・ブートチャンさん宅。国立公園のそばにあり、野生ゾウが生息するジャングルや、水浴びをする湖も近い。
　台所に現れたゾウは村の民家に頻繁に立ち寄り、食べ物をあさってはジャングルに帰っていくため、キッティチャイさんもよく来る客だと平然としている。
　キッティチャイさんいわく、ゾウ対処法の原則は餌を与えないこと。「食べ物をもらえなければ、勝手に出て行く。もうゾウが来ることには慣れているので、さほど心配はしなかった」とＡＦＰに語った。
　タイの国立公園やその周辺地域では、日常的に野生のゾウを見かける。おなかをすかせたゾウの群れに果物やトウモロコシを食べられたという農家からの報告もしばしばある。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/06/23-09:42）

Some families living in a jungle may be fearful of things going bump at night, but for one household in Thailand, the sight of an elephant rummaging through their kitchen was not a total shock.
It came to cook again, wrote Kittichai Boodchan sarcastically in a caption to a Facebook video he shot over the weekend of an elephant nosing its way into his kitchen.
Likely driven by the midnight munchies, the massive animal pokes its head into Kittichai's kitchen in the early hours of Sunday, using its trunk to find food.
At one point, it picks up a plastic bag of liquid, considers it briefly, and then sticks it in its mouth -- before the video cuts out.
Kittichai and his wife live near a national park in western Thailand, by a lake where wild elephants often bathe while roaming in the jungle.
He was unperturbed by the mammoth mammal, recognising it as a frequent visitor as it often wanders into homes in his village where it eats, leaves and shoots off back into the jungle.
The elephant had actually destroyed their kitchen wall in May, he said, creating an open-air kitchen concept reminiscent of a drive-through window.
This weekend, its sole task was to find food.
Kittichai said a general rule of thumb in dealing with unwelcome visitors crashing is not to feed them.
When it doesn't get food, it just leaves on its own, he told AFP.
I am already used to it coming, so I was not so worried.
Wild elephants are a common sight in Thailand's national parks and its surrounding areas, with farmers sometimes reporting incidents of their fruits and corn crops being eaten by a hungry herd.