An elephant made a surprise nighttime visit to a school in a remote forested area, entering the teachers’ quarters and rummaging through a storage space before leaving broken kitchen appliances behind.
The unusual encounter was captured on video and shared on Threads, where it attracted mixed reactions, with some users amused by the animal’s intrusion while others expressed sympathy for it.
The footage showed the elephant peering through a window with its trunk before reaching into the storage area, which contained kitchen appliances and other belongings.
Speaking to the New Straits Times, the woman who shared the video, identified only as Nurafi, said the elephant had wandered into the school grounds after finding a packet of sugar.
She said the animal remained there for about 30 minutes, while the footage was recorded by her husband, who works as a teacher at the school.
“My husband and I are in a long-distance relationship. During the incident, he managed to video call me, so I saw the elephant roaming around myself,” she said.
Nurafi explained that the teachers live at the school and return to their homes once a week.
She added that elephants frequently approached the school and a nearby village, although residents would usually chase them away before they came too close.
However, this time, the animal managed to enter the school compound under the cover of darkness.
Nurafi also clarified that the affected building was the staff and teachers’ quarters, rather than a villager’s home.
The video sparked a range of responses on Threads, with some users joking about the unexpected visitor while others pointed to habitat loss as a possible reason behind the animal’s appearance.
One user, eyahalim, jokingly suggested leaving a window open and serving food to the elephant, saying she would find it difficult to turn the animal away even if she lived in the village and faced the risk of an encounter.
Another user expressed sympathy, suggesting the elephant might have been hungry because so much forest had been cleared for human use, while describing it as the “big boss” of the area.
A different user shared a similar experience, saying elephants had repeatedly entered their wooden village home, particularly during bamboo shoot season, amid logging activities in the surrounding area.
Meanwhile, user monsibel made a pun about the incident, commenting that it was quite literally “addressing the elephant in the room”.
The video had attracted more than 658,000 views since it was uploaded the previous day.
