Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report

Video Credit: AsiaWire

This heartbreaking footage of an elephant and her cute young calf being rescued from an abandoned well shows the mother desperately trying to grab a digger arm to hoist herself and her calf to safety.

The incident took place in the borough of Sambalpur in the eastern Indian state of Odisha when the elephant cow and her cute calf fell into an abandoned well during the evening of 27th April.

In the video footage, an elephant is seen swimming towards the digger as it excavates the well’s bank to make an incline for the animals to walk up.

Picture Credits: AsiaWire

The cute calf, using its trunk to breath underwater, suddenly appears above the water surface, hanging onto its mum’s side.

At one point, the desperate elephant cow tries to grab the excavator’s bucket by its trunk.

At the end of the clip, the elephant is seen clambering to the top of the bank as the calf waits in the water.

Residents spotted the mother trying to climb out of the well with her calf the following morning, according to local media.

After villagers alerted the local authorities, forest officials arrived on the scene with as digger and excavated a path out of the well for the elephants to climb up.

The elephant cow clambered out of the disused well first and waited for her young calf to scramble up the incline made by the digger operator.

Reports said that both mother and calf were safely returned to the forest to join their herd.

Meanwhile, forest officials said that the entire rescue operation took just over three hours.