A miracle is unfolding at the Nairobi Elephant Nursery and the name of that miracle is Murera, a young female elephant, who owes her life to Mr. Piers Winkworth, the Manager of the Offbeat Safaris Tented Camp in Northern Kenyas Meru National Park. His Camp Guides reported the presence of this lone young elephant who over the past few days had been lying in grass at the same place. They could see that she had great difficulty getting up and was severely wounded, something that so upset their passenger clientele, that Mr. Winkworth brought her predicament to our notice and drove to Park Headquarters to seek permission and the help of Rangers to rescue the calf. Meanwhile, he had Emailed us a picture of the calf and we could see that she was just over two years of age, and as such still milk dependent. This was on the 21st February 2012. By 4 p.m. that day Murera had been safely captured and driven to the Meru Mulika Lodge airfield, where the chartered Caravan aircraft dispatched from Nairobi to collect her, had landed and was waiting. By 7 p.m. she was safely back in the Nursery, but far too wild for us to be able to assess the nature and extent of her injuries that night. We could, however, see that she was severely incapacitated, barely able to put the right foot to the ground, which was hugely swollen, while the right back leg had been rendered totally dysfunctional by what appeared to be either a dislocated or broken hip. Clearly, her injuries were extremely severe. That night she took water and a little milk, but collapsed the next day and had to be put on intravenous life support. This enabled us to take a closer look at the injured foot of one foreleg, which had deep suppurating holes clean through the sole, obviously caused by having trodden on the concealed poisoned spikes of an Elephant Trap hidden on an elephant trail a particularly gruesome and cruel method of poaching designed to render an elephant immobile so that it can be easily traced and killed for its ivory. The wounds were syringed with a saline solution to clear the sepsis, (of which there was gallons) and then packed with antibiotic ointment and healing green clay. Meanwhile, the Vet was able to take a look at the paralyzed right back leg, which was also hugely swollen, but, he thought, not actually broken. Obviously, however, there had been extensive nerve, ligament and tendon damage but with no portable local X-ray equipment capable of penetrating the density of elephant skin and flesh, there was no way of knowing. The prognosis for recovery was never encouraging, and the suffering so severe that he did not rule out the wisdom of putting a humane end to this through euthanasia..