Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  Feeding an elephant is not easy at the best of times. You have to mix gallons, not pints, and the bottle and teat have to be elephantine. David and I consulted the thick ‘orphans’ file that contained an assortment of ideas on how to simulate elephant’s milk. To our knowledge there had not been a single success story involving a newly born, milk-dependent elephant baby, due to their intolerance to the fat in cow’s milk. That night we fed the little elephant only water and glucose and went to bed with the problem still unsolved.

  Throughout the night, shrill bellows from the nursery stables forced me to succumb and I fed her a very weak mixture of cow’s milk, dreading the fallout the next day. And the next few weeks were indeed the nightmare I had predicted, as I battled with different milk concoctions, mixing, measuring, sterilizing, cleaning and changing the formula time and time again. Meanwhile, the little elephant declined rapidly, developing the dreaded skeletal look of starvation: the sunken eye sockets, pronounced cheekbones and feebleness that heralded the end. I desperately wanted this little elephant to live, for she was putting up such a brave struggle and I had come to love her dearly. Gentle and obedient sometimes, depending on the mood of the moment, just like a human child, a baby elephant captures your heart entirely – so utterly dependent and incredibly intelligent. Although a baby elephant duplicates humans in terms of age, they are certainly much more advanced than the human equivalent in early infancy and much more responsible and wiser in childhood and adolescence.

  We had deliberately avoided naming any very tiny elephant orphan that came to us, simply because we suspected that they would not be with us for long, but because I had a hunch that this baby was a direct descendant of Ahamed, possibly even a daughter, we gave her the Arabic name of Aisha. A few weeks later, on one of our afternoon strolls with the garden orphans, Angela and I encountered a group of German tourists. Aisha was on the alert – her soft pink ears stood out like round dinner plates from her tiny face as she gave a mock-charge that ended with a squeak, an early attempt at a trumpet. This unexpected sound startled her and she backed away with her head up, looking down her trunk. ‘Schmetterling, schmetterling,’ laughed the tourists. ‘What does that mean?’ asked Angela. ‘I suspect it means elephant,’ I suggested, but I was corrected. ‘No, no, Fräulein. It means ze botterfly.’ And they were right: standing there with her tiny ears outspread, the baby elephant did look rather like a butterfly. From that moment on, Aisha was known affectionately as ‘Shmetty’.

  The day came when Shmetty was too weak even to get to her feet. Sitting with her head in my lap, the tears rolled down my cheeks as I wondered just how I was going to keep her alive. I walked back into my store and stared at the rows of different formulas that I had been trying one by one. Only one, which had been given to me by Ruth Eden, a sympathetic English visitor, remained to be tested, and as I read through the ingredients I saw that it contained coconut oil. I remembered once being told that coconut oil was the nearest substitute for the fat of elephant’s milk, so my spirits lifted – all was not quite lost yet. I mixed it as directed on the tin and went to relieve Shmetty of her hunger.

  It worked! I was overjoyed. I hardly dared believe that I might have unlocked the mystery of how to rear an infant elephant. As the days passed, Shmetty began to lose her gaunt appearance, her skin became more supple and soft, and then one day she began to play, charging Bunty and Baby, scattering the Honk family and grabbing Jimmy by the back leg. As if in joyful recognition that this moment marked the beginning of Shmetty’s recovery, everyone was soon involved, Baby in the thick of things, bucking and kicking and leaping over the terraces with such ease. In her exuberance Baby speared the flower basket left lying on the lawn with one horn and charged with it attached to her head, resulting in total disarray. Honk, his wives and the guinea fowl set up their loud alarm squawking, Bunty made her snorting noise and her sons beat a hasty retreat to the relative calm of the bachelor herd. Even our newly acquired warthogs were drawn in, shooting out of the garden with their tails in the air, nearly colliding with David who was on his way up from the workshop.

  The four baby warthogs – Balthazar, Oliver, Cleo and Justine – had been found as tiny trembling piglets cowering by the side of the road near the Aruba Safari Lodge. Bloodstains on the road and the signs of a scuffle were evidence that their mother had been eaten by a lion. The wife of one of the scientists had brought them to me, but when she saw my face drop at the prospect of more babies to rear she gallantly took charge of the initial bottle-feeding stage. So it was not until the piglets were three months old and on solids that they joined the fold as part of the Garden Gang. David made them a long, low trough from which they took their daily rations of gruel and grain, and they were soon at home, wandering around all over the place, eager to get into the house. They were a disruptive influence in the garden, chasing the peacocks and guinea fowl, nudging the antelope orphans whenever they took a rest, forcing them to get up and move, or nipping at their legs forcing them to run. They were exceedingly mischievous, and Jimmy and Baby, who by now sported sizeable horns, began to lose patience with them. We reckoned it was just a matter of time before one of the warthogs got badly hurt, so we tempted the piglets away from the garden by excavating a burrow for them. This was a great diversion, each of them spending hours root-ling away with their snouts like miniature bulldozers chucking puffs of earth in the air around them. As they became more adventurous they spent their days around the main entrance gate to the Park. Returning home, a squeaking, grunting discussion took place about the evening’s plans. If the decision was to stay around, they would lie down at the front steps of the house in a line and wait to be carried to their stable for the night. But if the consensus was to go out, all four tails would shoot up erect and off they would trot in single file, heading for a culvert down by the main entrance. In time they became independent, sometimes returning individually to see what was going on or catching up with Eleanor’s herd down by the Voi River. It was when Cleo returned with four tiny piglets in tow that we knew our orphaned warthogs had successfully made the transition back where they rightly belonged.

  Meanwhile, Shmetty was thriving. I hardly dared believe I had found at least a part of the mystery of the milk formula that had been eluding me. Shmetty was living proof that I was doing something right, happily playing for hours in the little mud wallow that David had made for her. At first she wanted me to come in with her, but she soon hooked up with three little ostrich chicks recently brought in by a tourist bus, ruthlessly hauling them in when they came within trunk range. The chicks provided the companionship so vital for a baby elephant, attaching themselves to her as a mother figure even if she was a rather rough one, dragging them around the orchard by their necks. But wherever Shmetty was so were they, squatting patiently by her as she slept or when she played, racing around, pirouetting in circles with their ridiculously tiny wings outspread. They were the barometers that reflected Shmetty’s changing moods, and Angela, having read a romantic fairytale, rather poetically named them ‘Shmetty’s handmaidens’.

  Shmetty was very demanding, and as it was impossible for me to be with her at all times, David asked one of the rangers to ‘elephant sit’. Attaching Shmetty to her sitter entailed careful planning, since she was fully aware that he was not me. Only by throwing my apron over her head to cover her eyes could I make a dash for the gate, so that by the time she had managed to disentangle herself, I was nowhere to be seen. Bizarrely, as long as the ranger put on my apron, she would remain with him without too much fuss, but it was never really enough, for two round ears were constantly slightly raised, denoting unease, listening intently for the creak of the gate. When she spotted me, she rushed over bellowing loudly, almost bowling me over. Her loving rumbles usually ended in a loud roar that had to be muffled whenever Eleanor was in earshot. We had to keep these two apart while Shmetty was milk-dependent, otherwise Eleanor would assume the role of mothering without having the vital means to sustain her.

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nbsp; There were days when Shmetty was not herself, her stool showing signs of becoming too loose. Diarrhoea in elephants leads to life-threatening dehydration, and it took the combined efforts of David, the sitter and me to restrain Shmetty while we inserted a sulphadimi-dine pill down her throat during the five-day course. Often, the tablet would be ejected as she shook her head from side to side in irritation and distaste. There was no chance of getting it down disguised in her bottle of milk either, for she would immediately detect its presence and refuse the entire feed. After being dosed, she would head off to the kitchen and stand dejectedly with her head in the box that housed the gas cylinder, seeking comfort from the feeling of being underneath something large. She missed being tucked beneath her mother, and only the gas box seemed to give her this particular comfort and feeling of security whenever she was upset. It always tugged at my heartstrings to see her head in the box – there were some things I just couldn’t provide.

  Teatime was a fixed routine in our home, much loved by all the orphans because not only did the rattle of teacups indicate that the afternoon walk was imminent but it also meant the appearance of the teatime biscuits I baked, made from a recipe handed down from generation to generation in my family. Most of the orphans viewed these as a treat, particularly Jimmy and Baby. Gazing over the verandah ledge with drooling mouths and looks of such longing in their large liquid eyes, they pleaded with every fibre of their being and were impossible to resist, even though feeding them the biscuits was rather like posting letters, so rapidly were they downed. After observing this handout for some time, Shmetty decided she should have one as well. It was hilarious to watch, as she clearly had absolutely no idea what to do with a biscuit, waving it around in her trunk, popping it in and out of her mouth and her ear and finally sucking it up in her trunk until it got blown out in an elephant sneeze, making us all jump. However, the biscuits weren’t popular with everyone, and as soon as Bunty and her sons heard the teacups, they would walk over to the car park and wait patiently for us to assemble for our afternoon stroll.

  The sandpit by the office was almost as special as the little waterhole and so the walk had to be routed this way. There, Shmetty would play in the sand just like a child, climbing to the top and sliding down on her bottom until her ears and trunk were full of sand and it was time to press on. We had to arrange our return for just before six, because we couldn’t risk any noisy protests as Eleanor and the other orphans were coming up the hill back to their night stockades, and Shmetty had a terrific sense of time, objecting loudly if her feed was just a few minutes late. Nevertheless, despite such precautions, Eleanor was definitely suspicious that I was hiding something from her, for she would pause by the side of the house to listen for a long time, then shake her head in irritation before moving on. I have no doubt that she could detect Shmetty’s presence just by the amazing elephant intuition and was probably extremely puzzled as to why this particular calf had not been handed over to her as usual.

  The days turned into six months and our little elephant was still alive. Every month I would get out my tape measure and every month when she was half an inch taller, I felt on top of the world. I dreaded the day when I would have to part with her by handing her over to Eleanor. It would be Eleanor and not I who would introduce her to the wild world and tutor her in the way of her species. Of course I could not do that, and so I lived each day with her for as long as I could. A very special feeling flooded through me when I thought about my orphans – the sort of feeling I knew David must have experienced over and over and over again as he created the Park. It was a feeling of achievement and identity, a warm glow, a deep satisfaction that I was contributing something to the wilderness I loved so much. It was rewarding to be able to offer a second chance of life to any animal. When I recalled the dark days of working in an office in Nairobi, yearning to be in Tsavo with David by my side, I was struck by how lucky I had been and how I would not have chosen any other life on earth for myself other than this one I was now living. But failing Shmetty – as I inevitably did – left me so desolate and distraught, and to this day I can hardly bring myself to think about her death.

  When Jill announced her intention to marry Alan, her South African boyfriend, I instinctively felt that like my own first marriage this union might not stand the test of time. However, I couldn’t voice such doom-laden predictions: Jill appeared happy and in love. Bill and I greeted the news with cautious enthusiasm. Two weeks before the wedding I went to join my mother at Betty’s home in Muthaiga, to prepare for the reception in her beautiful garden. Although I settled Shmetty with an experienced sitter who had overseen the orphans, she missed me so much that her condition deteriorated rapidly. No amount of comfort or medication for her diarrhoea helped. With the wedding day imminent, it was impossible for me to leave, so all I could do was pray that my return would not be too late.

  My daughter looked radiant in her silver-threaded bridal gown as she entered the church on Bill’s arm. Three hundred guests, many from our extended family, had travelled from far and wide to share in the celebrations, as Jill was the first of her generation to get married. By doing all the catering ourselves, we kept the costs at an affordable level, as both Bill and David earned a pittance. The cake, decorated skilfully, mirrored the three peaks of Mount Kenya, which was fitting for Jill, who still held the record for being the youngest girl to have scaled Lenana, the third highest peak, under Bill’s supervision when she was just ten.

  Like my mother, both Jill and I always had difficulty holding back tears when parting and it was no different as she left for her honeymoon. Back at home I burst into Shmetty’s stable and as she struggled to get up to greet me, she collapsed in my arms. Cuddling her close, I wept tears of grief, for I knew her life was ebbing away. With her head cradled in my lap, she managed one last loud cry that ended in a sigh and then her body went limp. I had not noticed David’s approach until his arms encircled me and held me close. He was also overcome; this little elephant had so captured our hearts and her death left us bereft. I remained with Shmetty’s body cuddled close until it turned cold. Only then did I disentangle her and let her go. She was laid to rest in the little graveyard – a new fresh mound of red Tsavo soil to add to the long line of other newborn casualties. Of them all, however, this particular baby elephant would always be the most special for me and live in my heart and my memory for ever.

  In the months that followed, I struggled to turn the page, finding solace with my garden orphans, who lent such magic to the garden. Inevitably the time came when Jimmy and Baby answered the call of the wild and one morning disappeared together, causing me the usual anxiety. That afternoon we decided to take a game drive along the Voi River circuit, hoping that we might see them, and sure enough, to my relief, by the airfield stood a herd of eland that would not have looked unusual but for a striped kudu in among them. A few days later Jimmy returned alone. Obviously Baby’s eland peers did not relish having a kudu in their midst, so he had decided to come back home to Bunty and the garden.

  It was many moons before we saw any further signs of Baby, until one afternoon while having tea on the verandah we spotted a lone eland. Baby didn’t stay for long, as her best friend, Jimmy, was by now also elsewhere. He had acquired three beautiful females, whom we spotted with him during one of the afternoon strolls, and while the females bounded off with alarm barks, Jimmy, now a fully grown stately bull with ivory tips to his spiral horns, simply walked up to us, as friendly and as tame as ever. His coat had turned from the original baby brown to a kudu bull’s adult gunmetal grey, with white lateral stripes for perfect camouflage within the light and shade of the thickets. From then on we used often to see him and his entourage, and while he always said hello, he never stayed long, conscious of keeping his wives under close surveillance. Being bush dwellers, he and his wives preferred denser cover, and contact with them became more infrequent. However, both Jimmy and Baby were unmitigated orphan success stories, and during the time they shared thei
r lives with us, like Bunty, they contributed greatly to our understanding of their particular species.

  And then one day my parents arrived, unexpectedly, the bearers of devastating news. There being no telephone connection between the outside world and us, they had come in person, and it took my father some time to find the words to break such sad tidings to us. While on holiday in South Africa following Jill’s wedding, Betty and Graham had found a mysterious lump on their eleven-year-old daughter’s right thigh and within just a matter of days, Sally’s whole leg had been amputated from the hip. She now had to embark on a long and gruelling course of chemotherapy in an attempt to stop the spread of this particularly virulent form of bone cancer. This meant that her family had to move to South Africa as soon as possible. Fortunately Graham’s firm were willing to transfer him to the South African branch, so at least his continued employment was assured. My parents decided to move with them to South Africa to offer emotional and practical support to Sally.

  It seemed that everyone near and dear to me was converging on South Africa. After their honeymoon, Jill and Alan left for Cape Town, where he worked as a rigger. I was already missing Jill, my close confidante and proficient helpmate with the orphans. She was so passionate about animals that I felt sure she was going to find it difficult to adjust to urban living in a far-off land. Now that my parents, sister and her family were off there too it unsettled me greatly, and a few months later, for our annual leave, David and I went to South Africa to see how they were all getting on. I had other plans while we were there too. David had recently been complaining of a ‘cramp’ between his shoulder blades, and knowing that his father died at fifty-six, having suffered a heart attack during a polo match in Nyeri, I was worried. At that point in time, apart from the normal electrocardiograms, there was little else that could be done to diagnose and, moreover, correct heart conditions. However, some of the best heart specialists of the day were in South Africa and I planned to book David in for a thorough check-up. David had dismissed these cramps as inconsequential, and indeed nothing untoward had been found at the annual check-up for the renewal of his pilot’s licence. The doctor even said that the cramping was due to sitting for long periods in the cockpit of Tango Papa.