An elephant never forgets. Elephants, the gentle-presenting pachyderms of Africa and India, are regarded as some of the most intelligent animals on Earth.
They have been observed to practice great migrations and treks to designated areas purely by memory and in a somewhat ritualistic fashion.
They are animals with a sense of humor and the capacity for empathy.
They are animals with a culture and an understanding of higher thinking far above what we could expect from a lumbering, leathery big-eared beast.
They also have the capacity for anger and can become extremely dangerous killers combined with their great size.
For areas of the world that are still rural enough to meet the grazing grounds of the behemoths, the wild ambitions of an elephant can spell lethal danger for humankind.
And even if they recognize us by our faces, sometimes they want to take out their frustration on anyone they cross.
Such is what happened to Maya Murmu, an Indian woman who was out minding her own business when an Elephant decided she’d picked the wrong place, the wrong time.
10 /10 Maya Murmu’s Last Stand
The woman in question, Maya Murmu, was 70 years old, a mother and grandmother who lived in the rural village of Raipal in India’s eastern state of Odisha.
As usual for the villagers, she had to travel out of her home to get water.
While she was there, the elephant emerged from a nearby brush. No special report was made of her actions.
She may have been calling her water and paid it no mind to keep it calm, or she may have tried to shoo it away.
In either case, the elephant went too far and trampled her before being forced out by surrounding villagers and fleeing back into the brush.
9 /10 Emergency Care
Murmu was rushed to a hospital. Weighting an elephant on her body in various places broke many bones and burst many blood vessels. She was severely beaten and in terrible condition.
Unsurprisingly, she passed away due to her injuries before any potential procedures could be performed.
The family quickly assembled to honor her passing and prepared a funeral pyre that evening.