“My favorite thing about her is that she nibbles on my arm at night when she’s hungry and wants milk.”
When poachers attacked J’aime’s mom, the baby rhino probably tried to protect her. She might have charged the poachers or placed her tiny body between her mom and the poachers’ weapons.
But in the end, the 4-week-old rhino couldn’t save her mom. Not only did the poachers kill her mother, but they hacked off her horns, which they would sell for thousands of dollars.
J’aime survived the attack, but she didn’t come out unscathed. The poachers had stabbed her three times in her back.
Rescuers found J’aime alone in the bush and arranged for The Rhino Orphanage (TRO) in the Limpopo Province of South Africa to pick her up.
The TRO team named the baby rhino J’aime (“I love” in French) to commemorate the rhino recently poached for his horns at a zoo near Paris, France.
Despite her stab wounds, J’aime was in stable condition, and vets were able to treat her injuries. The TRO team mainly worried about getting J’aime to drink milk from a bottle.
Even though she probably missed her mom, J’aime immediately took to the bottle. She couldn’t get enough of it.
“Whenever it’s close to milk time, she whines and talks to let her carers know she’s hungry,” Jamie Traynor, the manager at TRO, told The Dodo.
J’aime will even try to suckle at her carers if she gets impatient.
“My favorite thing about her is that she nibbles on my arm at night when she’s hungry and wants milk,” Traynor said.
It’s not just milk that J’aime wants – she also wants cuddles.
“She loves to lie with her carers as close as possible,” Traynor said.
To help J’aime feel secure and safe, the carers take turns sleeping beside her. And like all babies, J’aime loves to sleep.
J’aime is currently the tiniest rhino at the orphanage, so she hasn’t yet been introduced to the other rhino orphans. But based on the size of J’aime’s feet, Traynor expects her to grow much bigger.
“She has adorable feet!” Traynor said. “They are too big for her body, so when she runs, all you see is her big feet.”
When J’aime’s about 3 years old, she’ll be able to be released back into the wild, and it’s Traynor’s hope that she’ll be able to live a peaceful, quiet life – away from poachers.
“Her future looks good!” Traynor said.
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