#Kaavan, ‘world’s loneliest elephant,’ was cheered up by listening to Frank Sinatra

“#Kaavan, ‘world’s loneliest elephant,’ was cheered up by listening to Frank Sinatra”

September 7, 2020 | 3:17pm

Amir Khalil, head of project development at FOUR PAWS International, sedates Kaavan, an elephant at the Marghazar Zoo in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Reuters

Amir Khalil, head of project development at FOUR PAWS International, sedates Kaavan, an elephant at the Marghazar Zoo in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Reuters

Veterinarians take blood samples of Kaavan, an elephant at the Marghazar Zoo in Islamabad

Frank Goeritz (left), head of the veterinary service at Leibniz Institute for zoo and wildlife research in Berlin, and Amir Khalil, head of project development at FOUR PAWS International, take blood sample of Kaavan, an elephant at the Marghazar Zoo in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Reuters

Amir Khalil, head of project development at FOUR PAWS International, (R) and Frank Goeritz, head of the veterinary service at Leibniz Institute for zoo and wildlife research in Berlin, use an anti-wound spay after drawing blood sample of Kaavan, an elephant at the Marghazar Zoo in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Reuters

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The Pakistan pachyderm dubbed “the world’s loneliest elephant’’ was nursed back to health — by a veterinarian who soothed him by singing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

“So I am not a good singer, but I started to take him behind and to train him and to sing to him so that he would accommodate me into a relationship, and I like the song Frank Sintatra [sings],” said Dr. Amir Khalil of the animal-rescue group Four Paws International, referring to Kaavan — a 36-year-old once-ailing elephant in a zoo in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad.

“I do it, ‘My Way,’ and this was my breakfast with him all the last days and nights,” the Egyptian-born animal doctor told Reuters in video footage.

Khalil said he believes the singing helped Kaavan — whose plight grabbed the attention of celebrities including Cher — recover enough so he can now be transferred to an animal sanctuary, likely in Cambodia.

Kaavan, who was deemed overweight even by elephant standards, spent the past 35 years at the zoo, which a judge ordered closed in May because of abysmal conditions.

The elephant was just given the green light to be transferred to a sanctuary, Four Paws announced over the weekend.

Still, there was a downside to all that singing during the elephant’s recovery, Khalil said.

“I think he hates me and he hates Frank Sinatra now,’’ the vet said of Kaavan with a laugh.