Sometimes these "heartwarming" stories are a bit too sappy for me but this one is truly interesting... In 1987, Mikele Mebembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Mikele approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mikele worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Mikele stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Mikele never forgot that elephant or the events of that day. Last month, exactly twenty years later, Mikele was walking through the Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo with his teenaged son. As Mr. Mebembe approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where he and his son Tapu were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Mikele, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man. Remembering the encounter in 1987, Mikele couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Mikele summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Mikele's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly. Probably wasn't the same elephant.
I would call the following a heartwarming story: "A hero gorilla saved the day in 1996 by carefully picking up a boy who fell into a Brookfield Zoo exhibit." http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_125172047.html
Taken word-for-word from Snopes.com. Let's at least give them credit. http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/elephant.asp They found it on a news group, rec.humor.funny, posted in 1995, and a nearly identical version in a children's book (The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler) from 1977.