The Embassed Elephant

Charging elephant - not my photo

Yet another elephant story! Anyone would think I like elephants. Well, I do. They are amazing animals and I just have a few very interesting elephant stories to tell you. Just wait until I start on tigers! I love tigers. In fact, I pretty much love all animals and any travel option which includes looking for animals is right up my ally!
Now, an elephant story from the dim and distant past! Many many years ago in a kingdom far far away, there was an elephant. No - back to the real story.

Many years ago I was working on diseases of fish and we (I was working at Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute) had a meeting and we invited one of the world leaders in fish diseases from the UK to the meeting. This meeting was held close to Lydenburg (where many of the trout farms can be found). The director of Veterinary Services was also attending this meeting and as we were quite close to the Kruger National Park, we decided to treat our overseas guest to a visit. The Kruger National Park (www.sanparks.org) is one of the best known wildlife reserves in Africa and is about the size of England.  As we were with the Director of Veterinary Services, we had some privileges which normal tourists to the park would not be able to get! There is a state vet who has the "terrible" job of working in the park. He was our guide for the day. This was great. We could go on roads and to places which are off limits to the normal tourist. We had a great day. We saw most of the animals, except elephant. Our international visitor was really keen to see and elephant but we could just not find an elephant.

About 2 or 3 kms from the camp, we can round the corner and there he was! A young bull elephant! The state vet explained to us that this was a young male and if we sit there long enough he will do a "mock" charge. So we sat a bit. It did not take too long for the young bull to get a bit upset with us and he did his "mock" change. Ears going, truck flapping in the typical "go away" movement, head shaking - the whole nine yards. Then the charge! The state vet was pretty sure that this would be a "mock" change, so when the elephant changed, we just sat there! I would seriously not recommend this behaviour to any tourist driving in a park with elephants. There have been many cases when the charge was not so much a mock charge, but a full on charge. You can look at my post on the elephants of Mabula to see what an elephant can do to a car! Anyway - we did not move and the elephant ended up a few meters from us. Showing all of the aggression he could muster! During the charge I was looking through a camera lens and did not realise just how close he really was!  We were in a pretty large 4 x 4 vehicle  and we ended up at the eye level of the elephant. There we sat looking at each other. The elephant trying his best to scare us and all the people in the vehicle sitting with wide open eyes! You could almost see the mind of the elephant working. Here he was putting on his very best display as a young bull elephant and this pesky car would just not move. His aggressive ear flapping became a little bit less confident and I swear I think he turned a bit red with embarrassment.

Just as the poor elephant was really not sure what to do now with this car which was standing its ground, a little mini can round the corner. The elephant looked at us, looked at the mini and looked at us again. You could see the elephant thinking that the mini was a bit more his fighting weight. He turned to face the mini, put on his very best show of aggression and charged at the mini. The driver of the mini frantically put his car into reverse and was last seen reversing down the road with a very happy elephant in full pursuit. This is how cars are meant to behave when an elephant charges!