Humans in general have a love affair going on with elephants, in part because pachyderms are intelligent, emotional and develop deep social bonds not unlike our own. That hasn’t changed for a Pennsylvania teen, who was on the receiving end of a Mike Tyson-worthy jab when a female elephant raised her trunk and put an end to the teen’s photo shoot.
The unnamed teen was in Zambia on a 12-day mission trip with other students from her high school, Grace Prep in State College, Pennsylvania, when she and others encountered the elephant that roams freely in a 10,000-acre preserve.
She seemed friendly enough, allowing other students to gently stroke her trunk.
But when the teen whipped out her phone to take a photo, the elephant suddenly slapped the teen with terrific force.
“I felt like 10 people had punched me at once as I was catapulted backward and my phone flew forward to the ground,” the teen wrote in a letter obtained by Fox News. A boy behind her caught her before she fell.
The blow “knocked the wind out of me,” the teen wrote, but she’s otherwise OK and laughing about the incident, which was captured on video and widely shared after Twitter user Ernie Ley posted it.
The teen wrote that the encounter was “a very shocking, interesting, and somewhat funny start to an amazing life-changing team experience.” The teens had teamed with the Heart of the Bride ministry group, which works with orphaned children in five countries, including Zambia.
The experience was transformative “not just because I was hit by an elephant, but because I had the privilege of working with such amazing people and built relationships I will remember forever,” she wrote. “If I had to get whacked by an elephant to partner with this amazing ministry again, I would do it all over the same exact way!”
She added: “And, yes, I still love elephants.
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