A New Foot for an Elephant 大象的新脚

By Marianne Landzettel, BBC Reporter

媒体英语会带大家一起学习BBC撰稿人在报道世界大事时常用到的单词和短语。

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Background: 十年前，在泰国做木材运输的一只大象Motola 踏中地雷，被迫截肢，失去了她的左前足。Motola 的不幸遭遇引起了国际社会的同情， 捐款纷纷涌入。现在她已经年满48岁，值得庆幸的是经过现代医学和一家专门设计人工假肢的慈善机构的支持，她的左脚装上了义肢，终于能再一次脚踏实地了。

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It was during a break from hauling logs that Motola, foraging for food, stepped on a land mine. A fortnight later, at Lampang elephant hospital, five surgeons and twelve nurses worked for three hours to amputate Motola's front left foot and save her life.

Her fate drew attention to the border region between Thailand and Burma, which is littered with land mines. And the television pictures showing the elephant hobbling on three legs, weeping with pain, had people donating thousands of dollars for her treatment within days.

But it was six years until Motola was well enough to be fitted with her first, provisional artificial limb: a sawdust-filled canvas shoe. Since then, experts at the Prostheses Foundation, a charity that normally produces cheap but efficient prosthetic devices for humans, took a cast of Motola's leg to mould a proper foot for her.

If she is happy with the new, much more stable device, Motola will be able to walk around with a little elephant called Mosha. She was only a baby when she too stepped on a land mine. Her first artificial leg was fitted in 2007. Mosha is doing well and, having outgrown two prosthetic limbs, the three-year-old is now walking around on a third.