[SmokingJoe]

Forgive for what?
And how’d it know she was getting buried that day?

[fidelis]

And how’d it know she was getting buried that day?

It read the obituaries?

[sten]

funeral pyre ... burned not buried

the elephant had to reach into the fire to get her

that was one pissed off pachyderm

[skr]

She wasn't buried, she was placed on a funeral pyre. Elephants have the best sniffers bar none. They can smell underground water. I don't know if that has to do with it, but he apparently stayed in the area and did not like her or her scent. Maybe some abuse occurred in its past that she reminded him of. From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/elephants-smell-quantity/ :

Elephant noses are sensitive enough to detect TNT, and distinguish between tribes of humans that have traditionally treated them well and groups that have acted aggressively. They even have the precision to discriminate between structurally similar molecules that are mirror images of each other—a subtle difference that would stump the schnozzes of humans and other primates.

[FrdmLvr]

It was probably in the paper.