AFRICAN ODYSSEY:
Sunday, February 1, 2011
PLAYING "HIDE AND SEEK" WITH ELEPHANTS
In which we almost despair of seeing elephants, discover they can hide in bush, and tighten sphincter muscles as these huge mammals suddenly appear – heading straight at us
Where do you hide 450 elephants, 60 rhinoceros, a dozen lions and lots of other wild beasts? May I suggest a bush?
Sounds improbable? Well I don't mean a single green bush, but "The Bush"' which is what the South Africans call their jungle.
This is not a jungle of soaring trees forming a canopy of shade and hiding places, but low-level scrub and bushes that hardly look "as high as an elephant's eye" (with apologies to Oscar Hammerstein's reference to the corn in "Oklahoma").
We have just spent 24 hours playing "Hide and Seek" with African elephants, you know, the ones with the BIG ears. You would think that it is hard to hide the world's biggest land mammal, weighing in at anything up to 10 tons, but as we drove around the Addo Elephant Park, I began to wonder.
There is elephant dung everywhere, on the sealed roads, the gravel roads, by the water holes. What we keep a look out for is steaming, fresh dung, a sure sign that the elephant has been here recently and so might still be around. "Fresh and Wild" takes on a different meaning in nature's jungle!
Seems the elephants spend most of their time just munching on the vegetation and crapping art objects for Chris Ofili (a British artist who uses elephant turds in his award winning and extremely popular "paintings").
Another way to play “Spot the Elephant” is to observe the amount of torn and broken branches scattered across the road. Seems the elephant is a messier eater than my one-and-a-half year-old granddaughter Zoe!
In reality the only way to find an elephant is to be there and be lucky. The elephant is not really hiding from me at all. But the dense bush is enough to shield this huge animal from view until the last minute when it emerges from the bushes on your left and plods its steady and unconcerned way towards the vegetation on your right, where it will disappear into the bush within 20 metres of the road edge.
Unbelieveable? A family of eight-ton adult elephants plus three-ton kids whose girth would shame even the most obese of the American fast-food species can just disappear? Unbelievable, I agree. And yet we have watched as whole elephant families become invisible. Stare as much as you like, they are gone, ‘just like that’ (with apologies to Tommy Cooper).
We drive on and - suddenly - there is a huge bull elephant just in front of us. In the middle of the road. Walking towards us. Ears flapping. Trunk going up and down. Giant head moving from side to side. This looks like one very angry, very large, very many tons of prehistoric flesh bearing down on us.
The white reverse lights of the first car in front of us come on and it rapidly grinds past us, going backwards. Does the driver know something I should know?.
The next in line is our car with Vicky and Fransje (one of our hosts) inside. I am in the second car with husband George. Engine running. We do not budge.
George begins to tell me about an experience they had with an angry, rogue elephant in the Kruger Park which simply stood in the middle of the road and refused to let any cars go by. One family had to stay overnight in their car because they were afraid to move. A nice story to tell me now George as this creature looms ever closer, ears flapping, trunk waving and head moving around.
The elephant is getting closer, and bigger. It is plodding along at a steady, undisturbed pace. Lifting one giant leg slowly and deliberately and then putting the enormous pad down flat and solidly before raising the next one. But all the time looming larger as it nears.
Hold your breath. Engine running. Don’t move. Maybe he is not interested in us?
Did I say he? Yes indeed he is so close we can now see the evidence of his manhood. This clearly is a fully grown male buck elephant, traditionally not the friendliest sort of creature. And weighing probably about seven or eight tons, not to taken lightly (sorry for awful pun but we were just a teeny bit apprehensive).
He moves to our right and soon his trunk is level with our bonnet, his ivory tusks are level with our window. I am looking directly into his left eye and notice he is covered in red dust and has blond eyelashes. Did you know that multi-ton male elephants have blonde eyelashes?
I don’t think he is looking at us. He is staring straight ahead. He is plodding past. A lumbering giant with something else on his mind than humans in a metal and glass box. Slowly and steadily his rythmic progress, and with relief his disproportionately small tail passes us. Phew!
We are alive and unharmed. We feel thrilled, amazed, relived. We start breathing again.
Time to move. Slip the Nissan into gear. Oh no! Here comes another reddish-brown giant plodding its way towards us. Perhaps it will be less well disposed? But hey, having braved the first one without doing the reverse manoeuvre, we can sit this one out. He moves ever closer, pauses just in front of the car, looks at us, then turns his head to the right to munch on some succulent morsels of bush and grass by the roadside. Surely a sign that he is not interested in us?
As number two passes the car, this time on the left side, I am calm enough to study him closer and realise that the surprising reddish-brown colour, I remember zoo elephants being grey, is soil which he must have sprayed over himself at a water hole. The eyelashes are still blonde as this majestic mammal moves past. What an extraordinary animal!
And now a third elephant appears walking straight at us, ears flapping, trunk waving and head moving up and down. Well, okay Mr Elephant, I know that very fortunately for me your friends are not interested in us and I assume you have a similar mindset. Fortunately my assumption proves right, as he passes to our right
My emotions have moved from fear to familiarity to fascination. I am mesmerized by you, Mr Elephant, by the opportunity to see such a huge, untamed animal in its natural habitat walk past me at what seems like arm’s length.
No giant screen at Imax, no 3D glasses . This is real.
Wow!
FOOTNOTE: A week later, February 20, the Cape Times runs a series of photos, see below, under the headline: “Guess who gets the right of way?” showing a bull elephant head-butting and then overturning a car in a Game Reserve near Johannesburg.
Next time we might reverse!
David Lennon
13-21 February 2011
Look what could have happened!
Sunday, February 1, 2011
PLAYING "HIDE AND SEEK" WITH ELEPHANTS
In which we almost despair of seeing elephants, discover they can hide in bush, and tighten sphincter muscles as these huge mammals suddenly appear – heading straight at us
Where do you hide 450 elephants, 60 rhinoceros, a dozen lions and lots of other wild beasts? May I suggest a bush?
Sounds improbable? Well I don't mean a single green bush, but "The Bush"' which is what the South Africans call their jungle.
This is not a jungle of soaring trees forming a canopy of shade and hiding places, but low-level scrub and bushes that hardly look "as high as an elephant's eye" (with apologies to Oscar Hammerstein's reference to the corn in "Oklahoma").
We have just spent 24 hours playing "Hide and Seek" with African elephants, you know, the ones with the BIG ears. You would think that it is hard to hide the world's biggest land mammal, weighing in at anything up to 10 tons, but as we drove around the Addo Elephant Park, I began to wonder.
There is elephant dung everywhere, on the sealed roads, the gravel roads, by the water holes. What we keep a look out for is steaming, fresh dung, a sure sign that the elephant has been here recently and so might still be around. "Fresh and Wild" takes on a different meaning in nature's jungle!
Seems the elephants spend most of their time just munching on the vegetation and crapping art objects for Chris Ofili (a British artist who uses elephant turds in his award winning and extremely popular "paintings").
Another way to play “Spot the Elephant” is to observe the amount of torn and broken branches scattered across the road. Seems the elephant is a messier eater than my one-and-a-half year-old granddaughter Zoe!
In reality the only way to find an elephant is to be there and be lucky. The elephant is not really hiding from me at all. But the dense bush is enough to shield this huge animal from view until the last minute when it emerges from the bushes on your left and plods its steady and unconcerned way towards the vegetation on your right, where it will disappear into the bush within 20 metres of the road edge.
Unbelieveable? A family of eight-ton adult elephants plus three-ton kids whose girth would shame even the most obese of the American fast-food species can just disappear? Unbelievable, I agree. And yet we have watched as whole elephant families become invisible. Stare as much as you like, they are gone, ‘just like that’ (with apologies to Tommy Cooper).
We drive on and - suddenly - there is a huge bull elephant just in front of us. In the middle of the road. Walking towards us. Ears flapping. Trunk going up and down. Giant head moving from side to side. This looks like one very angry, very large, very many tons of prehistoric flesh bearing down on us.
The white reverse lights of the first car in front of us come on and it rapidly grinds past us, going backwards. Does the driver know something I should know?.
The next in line is our car with Vicky and Fransje (one of our hosts) inside. I am in the second car with husband George. Engine running. We do not budge.
George begins to tell me about an experience they had with an angry, rogue elephant in the Kruger Park which simply stood in the middle of the road and refused to let any cars go by. One family had to stay overnight in their car because they were afraid to move. A nice story to tell me now George as this creature looms ever closer, ears flapping, trunk waving and head moving around.
The elephant is getting closer, and bigger. It is plodding along at a steady, undisturbed pace. Lifting one giant leg slowly and deliberately and then putting the enormous pad down flat and solidly before raising the next one. But all the time looming larger as it nears.
Hold your breath. Engine running. Don’t move. Maybe he is not interested in us?
Did I say he? Yes indeed he is so close we can now see the evidence of his manhood. This clearly is a fully grown male buck elephant, traditionally not the friendliest sort of creature. And weighing probably about seven or eight tons, not to taken lightly (sorry for awful pun but we were just a teeny bit apprehensive).
He moves to our right and soon his trunk is level with our bonnet, his ivory tusks are level with our window. I am looking directly into his left eye and notice he is covered in red dust and has blond eyelashes. Did you know that multi-ton male elephants have blonde eyelashes?
I don’t think he is looking at us. He is staring straight ahead. He is plodding past. A lumbering giant with something else on his mind than humans in a metal and glass box. Slowly and steadily his rythmic progress, and with relief his disproportionately small tail passes us. Phew!
We are alive and unharmed. We feel thrilled, amazed, relived. We start breathing again.
Time to move. Slip the Nissan into gear. Oh no! Here comes another reddish-brown giant plodding its way towards us. Perhaps it will be less well disposed? But hey, having braved the first one without doing the reverse manoeuvre, we can sit this one out. He moves ever closer, pauses just in front of the car, looks at us, then turns his head to the right to munch on some succulent morsels of bush and grass by the roadside. Surely a sign that he is not interested in us?
As number two passes the car, this time on the left side, I am calm enough to study him closer and realise that the surprising reddish-brown colour, I remember zoo elephants being grey, is soil which he must have sprayed over himself at a water hole. The eyelashes are still blonde as this majestic mammal moves past. What an extraordinary animal!
And now a third elephant appears walking straight at us, ears flapping, trunk waving and head moving up and down. Well, okay Mr Elephant, I know that very fortunately for me your friends are not interested in us and I assume you have a similar mindset. Fortunately my assumption proves right, as he passes to our right
My emotions have moved from fear to familiarity to fascination. I am mesmerized by you, Mr Elephant, by the opportunity to see such a huge, untamed animal in its natural habitat walk past me at what seems like arm’s length.
No giant screen at Imax, no 3D glasses . This is real.
Wow!
FOOTNOTE: A week later, February 20, the Cape Times runs a series of photos, see below, under the headline: “Guess who gets the right of way?” showing a bull elephant head-butting and then overturning a car in a Game Reserve near Johannesburg.
Next time we might reverse!
David Lennon
13-21 February 2011
Look what could have happened!
No comments:
Post a Comment