The residents of a village in Sri Lanka put their hands and heads together to come up with a daring plan to help an elephant in distress. The tusker, which had fallen into a 25-feet-deep well in Welikanda, eastern Sri Lanka, was rescued in an operation lasting almost two hours.

It involved the use of everything from bare hands to a digger, according to Yahoo News.

A video of the successful operation – which ended with the elephant being guided back into the wild – was posted on the internet.