An Elephant in My Kitchen: What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage, and Survival

by Françoise Malby-Anthony

  ‘I saw the strangest thing,’ he said, tucking into T-bone steak and gratin dauphinois. ‘Nana was taking the herd through the trees near the dam when she seemed to go off course.’ He gave a puzzled frown. ‘And then Frankie took over the lead and Nana quite happily let her. I’ve never seen them do that before. Something’s wrong.’

  ‘Do you think she’s sick?’

  ‘I hope not. I’ll go and take another look tomorrow. It’ll be easier to see if there’s a problem in daylight.’

  We had a restless night and neither of us slept much. At dawn, he kissed me goodbye and dashed off to check on his girl. I hoped it wasn’t poachers and that she wasn’t suffering from a festering gunshot wound. I shuddered at the thought of losing her, or any of our herd for that matter. They were as important to us as our families. Big Jeff, our Labrador, sensed my anxiety and jumped onto the bed, cuddling his sturdy body against mine. I gave him a hug then got up, too worried about Nana for a lie-in.

  Lawrence came home in the afternoon, looking grim.

  ‘I think she has a cataract on her right eye. It’s bad and looks as if it’s almost completely covering the eye. I’ll be surprised if she can see anything out of it at all. No wonder Frankie was helping her last night.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe I’m only finding out now.’

  ‘Do you think we could have it removed?’

  ‘No idea. I’m waiting for Cobus to call me back. If anyone can, he can.’

  Dr Cobus Raath was a veterinary surgeon based in Nelspruit who had masterminded the relocation of the herd to us, and Lawrence knew he could trust him. It took a week before he was free to come to Thula Thula, and during the wait, Lawrence was with Nana every single day.

  ‘Frankie and Nana’s teamwork is incredible,’ he reported back to me. ‘They’re timesharing their responsibilities. During the day, Nana can see fine with one eye so she’s the boss, but as soon as it gets dark, Frankie takes over. I hope to God we can help her.’

  The vet arrived with three students in tow and Lawrence immediately took them in search of Nana. I kept in radio contact with him throughout the day as they searched high and low for her. Nana had disappeared. Night began to fall and they reluctantly agreed to try again the next day. As if Nana sensed their capitulation, she appeared out of the trees and strolled across the clearing towards them.

  ‘Hello, Nana, my baba. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Where have you been?’ Lawrence said; then feeling guilty as hell, signalled to Cobus to dart her.

  The herd scattered and the little ones trumpeted in distress. Lawrence hammered a few gunshots into the ground to make sure they stayed away so he and Cobus could safely approach Nana. The vet swung his medical kit out of the 4×4 and they both ran towards her.

  ‘You’re right. It’s a cataract, a bad one,’ grimaced Cobus.

  ‘Can you operate?’

  ‘Not without a very real danger to the eye. I’ll smother it with disinfectant to reduce the risk of further problems and then—’

  ‘Lawrence! Watch out!’ yelled Vusi.

  Frankie was thundering towards them across the savannah.

  ‘Cover me! I can’t leave Nana out cold,’ shouted Cobus.

  ‘Get the hell out of here now!’ cried Vusi.

  The vet injected the reversal drug into Nana.

  Lawrence yanked him to his feet. ‘Run!’

  The two men sprinted to the vehicle and were pulled inside by the rangers. Frankie shot right past them to Nana. Chests heaving, Lawrence and the vet watched her keep vigil until the drug took effect and a very groggy Nana heaved herself back onto her feet. With her trunk draped over Nana’s body, Frankie glowered at the men as she tenderly nudged Nana towards the safety of the trees.

  Nana knew she was going blind and realized that she wouldn’t be able to look after the herd for much longer. Safety comes before ego in this wise feminine world and she realized the time had come to hand over her responsibilities. If only world leaders gave up power as graciously.

  We were so grateful for Frankie. She had been through a lot in her life but she was a tough cookie and has proven to be a shrewd and fearless matriarch. What a contrast to the highly strung elephant she had been when she almost killed Lawrence and me not long after Lawrence released the herd into the reserve for the first time.

  * * *

  He had decided that they were settled in enough to be let out of their holding boma so they could enjoy the full expanse of the reserve. Every couple of hours, he drove out to check up on them and to make sure they weren’t trying to break through the perimeter fence.

  ‘They were near the river this morning. Shall we go and see how they are? We can take the quad bike,’ he suggested.

  I hopped onto the back of the off-road bike, thrilled to see the herd in the wild at last. We bumped and bucked along a rutted track up to a viewpoint from where we could survey the area where he thought they were. A heat haze hung low over the reserve and the hills and savannah were a milky blur, but Lawrence always had a sixth sense about their whereabouts and spotted them immediately.

  ‘They’re by the river and it looks as if they’re on the move. Let’s give them some time to leave the bank, then we’ll use the river to get to them,’ he said.

  The Nseleni River runs right through the reserve – a perfect bush freeway. It hadn’t rained in ages so we drove through the low water, laughing and holding our feet high and dry. Lawrence revved the engine hard and powered up the steep bank to get us out of the riverbed. I clung to him to counteract the kickback. When I looked up, the elephants were right there.

  ‘Shit,’ Lawrence grunted.

  We were in the middle of them. I felt small, very exposed and yet strangely unafraid. I knew they were wild and that our reserve was still new to them, but I naively thought they were happy to be with us, and happy elephants won’t hurt you, right? Wrong.

  Frankie was at the back of the herd, as stunned as we were, but then she flew between the other elephants towards us, ears pulled back, body shaking in fury, and her eyes … she has a look, a frown, a way of squinting out of the corner of her eye, that turns my blood cold. None of the other elephants do it, just her.

  ‘We’ve got a problem,’ Lawrence muttered.

  I slid my arms around him and held on. If he was worried, I was terrified.

  We couldn’t go back. We couldn’t go forward. The herd was in front and the river behind, and we were between Frankie and two babies who were squealing and trumpeting in panic. The rest of the herd moved about restlessly, edgy and full of tension. Frankie shook her great head at us. Nana stood by silently, observing warily. I was bewildered by how agitated they were. It had never occurred to me that they would be anything but peaceful. I was about to learn a thing or two about angry elephants.

  Lawrence took out his 9-mm to scare them off with a few shots in the air.

  ‘Don’t, Lolo. We don’t know how they’ll react.’

  Frankie gave an ear-splitting trumpet and headed for us, trunk rolled under for maximum impact, eyes blazing. Those eyes alone could have killed me. Nana did nothing to stop her.

  ‘We’re in trouble,’ Lawrence muttered, giving me the gun. ‘Shoot if it gets bad.’

  He might as well have given me a toy for all that 9-mm could have helped. I took it reluctantly, hating even to touch it. Frankie sprinted towards us. I closed my eyes. Nothing would stop her. We were going to die.

  Lawrence sprang up on the bike and threw his arms overhead to make himself bigger.

  ‘Frankie, it’s okay, my baba. It’s me. It’s me.’

  She was close. Her rage seared like lasers.

  This is it, we’re dead, I thought.

  ‘Frankie, Frankie! My baba, it’s me. It’s me.’

  Something in his voice – desperation? love? – reached her. I peered past Lawrence. Her trunk swung at us in wild circles but her hostility had dropped a fraction. I don’t know how I knew but I sensed it.

  ‘It’s okay, m
y baba. It’s me. It’s me.’

  Her ears flapped backwards and forwards, no longer pinned against her body – the deadly sign of intention to kill. Her mood was changing. I choked back a sob and cowered down. She plunged towards us again.

  Lawrence stayed standing, arms high, panting.

  ‘Frankie, it’s me.’

  She stopped right at the bike.

  The world went silent, holding its breath.

  Frankie glared at us from above. I saw the deep wrinkles on her skin, the fine hair on her trunk, long thin cracks in her massive tusks. One toss of them could fling us and the bike into the air like insects.

  She backtracked a few paces and waited for the calves to bolt past her.

  We didn’t move.

  She swivelled her head from side to side, showering us in dust, never taking her eyes off us.

  Lawrence sank down onto the seat.

  ‘My baba,’ he whispered.

  Her anger changed to surprise, as though she suddenly understood who we were, that the people she was about to kill were those who had given her a new home, the ones she was beginning to trust. Her eyes softened. Oh, it’s you. She loped back into the bush after her son and daughter, throwing us a puzzled backward glance as she left.

  Lawrence and I collapsed against each other. The herd moved off. We sat frozen, in shock, not daring to move. We had escaped being trampled by an enraged elephant. I stared death in the face that day and felt terror I’d never experienced in my life.

  We realized in hindsight that the terrible racket of the quad bike must have given her such a fright that her memories of what humans had done to her blinded her to who we were. It was so careless of us to have gone out on the bike, but we had never looked after elephants before and were learning every day.

  I saw these majestic creatures in a different light after that because I understood how similar they were to us. She did exactly what we would have done in that situation – protected her family from danger. I also saw that elephants are capable of insight, of realizing their mistakes. One minute Frankie was hell-bent on killing us, the next she knew we weren’t the enemy and she walked away. But after that day, I became very wary of her. I had seen the black rage in her eyes and knew she could have killed us if she’d wanted to.

  Wild animals are like the sea – beautiful, unpredictable, dangerous. An overdue reality check both Lawrence and I needed to learn.

  8

  Baby Thula

  Being guardians and protectors of wildlife is not for the faint-hearted. The rewards are immense but the constant worry never goes away and when something goes wrong, the loss, the guilt, the pain, is indescribable.

  Back in the summer of 2004, we had been waiting for weeks for Nana’s daughter Nandi to give birth. It’s difficult to pinpoint a due date with elephants because they’re pregnant for twenty-two months and often we only realize they’re expecting when the pregnancy is well under way. By then, it’s impossible to work out how far gone they are.

  That morning, the rangers reported that the calf had been born at last but that the herd was behaving strangely. Lawrence went out immediately to check. He returned at midday, ashen-faced.

  ‘There’s something wrong with her feet and she can’t stand.’

  I looked at him, bewildered. Several calves had been born since the herd arrived and we had never had a problem with any of the births.

  ‘She’s trying to get up and they’re all there, helping her, wrapping their trunks under her body and holding her up, but as soon as they let go she collapses. I was there for hours and it’s so damn hard to watch.’

  ‘If she can’t stand, how is she suckling?’

  He grimaced glumly.

  ‘She isn’t. She can’t get to Nandi’s breasts from the ground – that means she’s had nothing to eat since she was born. And in this damn heat, she won’t stand a chance. We may already be too late.’

  ‘Are they somewhere safe? Where are they?’

  ‘On the way to the lodge, just before the river crossing, where there’s not a blasted tree in sight. Nana and Nandi are using their bodies to shield her from the sun but even the herd can’t stay out there for days on end. It’s a disaster, Frankie. There’s no way that little thing will survive.’

  ‘You don’t know that, chéri. Elephants are smarter than we think. They’ll find a way to help her.’

  ‘What if they feel they have to abandon her?’

  ‘They would never do that!’

  ‘They might have to. If the baby holds the herd back, then Nana and Frankie have no choice.’

  ‘Then we’ll save her. We can’t leave her to die.’

  He nodded wearily.

  ‘I know that, but the calf doesn’t just need feeding, Frankie. She needs an orthopaedic specialist. I don’t even know if such a thing exists for elephants. We always said we would let nature take its course but…’

  He fell silent. I knew he was right, but we’d never had to put our belief to the test before.

  ‘Maybe they won’t abandon her,’ I said hopefully.

  ‘She won’t last another day without milk.’ He paced up and down. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’

  ‘Go back, Lolo. See what happens and then we’ll decide.’

  I made him some sandwiches and he packed bottles of water into a cooler box and headed back to the herd. I glanced at the thermometer at the door: thirty-seven degrees and it was two o’clock in the afternoon. I ran after him with his cap. His skin is about as un-African as you can get, and without it he would turn into a lobster.

  I was already asleep when he slipped into bed that night and woke me to say she was still alive.

  ‘She’s desperately weak but they’re all still with her. They haven’t given up on her yet. Please God she makes it through the night.’

  At dawn, he was off again to help the calf’s grandmother and mother keep an eye on the little one. He was family, after all. I phoned him mid-morning to find out how she was.

  ‘She’s still alive, only just,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘But it looks like Nana has decided that it’s time to go.’

  Female elephants are deeply maternal and often take care of each other’s babies, so leaving behind the newborn calf would be devastating for all of them.

  Nana made the first move to leave and Lawrence’s description of her melancholic walk away from her dying granddaughter broke my heart.

  ‘She shuffled off with such heavy, slow steps,’ he said in despair.

  Frankie had already taken over as leader but Nana was still a much-loved adviser, and she was also the calf’s grandmother, so it’s possible that Frankie had left the decision up to her. Nana must have longed to stay and console her daughter but instead she led the herd away. It was so typical of the wise guide we loved. Her decisions were never for herself. She always put the herd first. I hope I never find myself in the position that she was in that day. This is why the role of matriarch falls to leaders who not only have the insight to make such big decisions, but also have the courage to follow them through.

  And so baby Thula was left to die.

  Only Nandi stayed behind, bone-weary from childbirth and the endless vigil that was going into its second day.

  How on earth could Lawrence and I ignore her plight? We were committed to the theory of letting nature take its course, but in this case it was impossible. We couldn’t have lived with ourselves knowing that we hadn’t done everything to save her, especially after the herd had tried so hard themselves to help her.

  ‘I’m going in with the guys to get her,’ Lawrence said.

  I hugged him hard, grateful for his big heart.

  Knowing that Nandi hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since giving birth, Lawrence loaded his Land Rover with freshly cut alfalfa and water and carefully reversed towards her. It was risky, because if she was suspicious of his intentions, she would charge him. A 4×4 looks very sturdy but it’s nothing more than a tin can to a three-ton mama pro
tecting her dying young.

  The moment she caught the smell of food, her trunk shot into the air and she lumbered over to the vehicle and began to siphon up gallons of water and squirt it into her mouth.

  Lawrence edged away. Nandi followed trustingly. Feeling guilty, he stopped to let her drink. She drank and drank, quenching thirty-six hours of thirst. Then he moved the vehicle forward at a snail’s pace, leading her behind bushes until the baby was out of sight.

  The rangers rushed to the calf. She was so tiny, it only took two of them to lift her into their truck. Minutes later, they drove up to the house.

  She was thin, listless, her newborn ears blistered by the sun, and she had open puncture wounds on her sides where her mother and aunts had prodded her with their tusks to get her to stand. I thought she would die within the hour. She lay motionless in the shade of the wild fig trees, following us with frightened eyes.

  We doused her with cool water to lower her body temperature. The vet administered a drip with life-saving nutrients. I sat next to her, rubbing her face and whispering to her. Reste avec nous, ma petite. Stay with us, my little one.

  All we knew about baby elephants was that they were highly intolerant of cow’s milk. Lawrence got on the phone to the Daphne Sheldrick sanctuary in Kenya to find out how to feed her. They recommended a special mixture using coconut oil. A ranger raced off to Empangeni to buy bottles and teats and the right ingredients.

  The vet gave her a second drip bag, and a third.

  Miraculously, she perked up.

  ‘If she survives the next twelve hours, she stands a chance,’ the vet said. ‘She’s a damn big calf. It looks as if she could have been too big for her mother and her feet didn’t have enough space to grow correctly, but the good news is that she doesn’t have any broken bones.’

  My guest room became a nursery overnight and we carefully moved her into our home. She lay on the mattress, surrounded by what I hoped was the reassuring smell of grass and hay. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Apart from her sunburnt ears and tusk wounds, her tiny body was perfect in every way, with a beautiful baby face, squirming trunk and surprisingly sturdy-looking legs. In fact, if the vet hadn’t told us that there was something wrong with her feet, I wouldn’t have known. She fell asleep quickly, lying on her side, with her trunk rolled up against her mouth for comfort. I could have watched her forever.