How or why this occurred remains a mystery for some, but it’s a mystery only if you grant elephants’ limited intelligence. Once you grasp that these ancient giants who have roamed the planet since time immemorial are sentient beings it all becomes clear. Nana, once a prisoner of the boma herself, had decided to let the nyala go free. It is as simple – or complicated, if you like – as that. There can be no other explanation.
The story was told and retold in the bush. Eventually the local media got hold of it and it spread to the international press: how a herd of wild elephants had freed a group of captured antelope. The significance of one species rescuing another for no ulterior motive seemed to interest even the most jaded journalist.
Of course, the next day we had to start all over again, capturing fresh nyala and this time we strung an electric wire powered by a mobile energizer around the Nyala boma to prevent another rescue mission. To me the trouble was worth it. I had never before felt prouder of my elephants.
chapter twenty-eight
Mistakes in the bush have a nasty habit of being irrevocable. As I have no desire to be a dead hero, I usually err on the side of caution by a healthy margin. Whenever I park the Land Rover near the herd, I always make sure I have a clear escape route. Or when I approach them on foot, I never venture too far from the vehicle.
But this time I was caught unawares. By the time I saw her coming, it was too late. ET was hurtling out of the bush like a missile and there was no way I could scramble to the safety of my vehicle in time. I was in big trouble and had no option but to defy every screaming instinct in my body and force myself to hold my ground and face the charge. Despite my mounting panic, some small voice kept reminding me that any attempt to flee would be a deadly mistake.
All of a sudden, Nana, who was about twenty yards off, moved across at surprising speed for her bulk and blocked the charge with the broadside of her body. The youngster stumbled, knocked off course. Clumsily regaining her balance, she meekly swung around and lumbered to the back of the herd while Nana resumed grazing as if nothing had happened.
I stared, barely breathing, pulling body, soul and nerves back together. That was certainly a first for me. In fact I had never heard of it before; a wild elephant blocking the charge of another to protect a human. Nana was radically changing the way I perceived her species. Over the past few weeks I had been wondering how to handle ET’s constant aggression and here Nana was doing it for me, disciplining and teaching her not to hurt me.
Before ET’s arrival I had planned to start cutting back on my visits to the herd. My sole purpose was to rehabilitate them in the bush so that they remained truly wild elephants, supremely at peace in their environment. That was why I was adamant that none of my staff ever interacted with them – in fact if they did, they were liable for instant dismissal. It was crucial that the herd learned to trust a human, but only one, which would stop them from attacking people but still keep them feral. Wild elephants that become accustomed to people generally can be extremely dangerous and unpredictable at times and almost always end up getting shot. For this reason I never interacted with the herd for guests.
My idea was that once the herd was settled I would gradually withdraw until there was no more contact. I believed I was almost there.
But ET was still a major problem. While the herd comfortably tolerated Land Rovers cruising past, ignoring them as they should, ET was doing the exact opposite. She regularly made threatening moves and gestures at the vehicles, which was alarming guests and upsetting the rangers. Wilderness bush walks, a favourite with our visitors, had become too dangerous to continue.
Consequently, I needed to spend more time with her. So instead of cutting back contact as planned, I was now forced to increase visits – with some alarming consequences, as I’d just experienced. I would have to be more careful in future.
I started working with her from my vehicle, approaching slowly head-on and watching her reaction. Invariably she would have a go at me, whether it was just two or three aggressive steps or a headlong run, angrily flaring her ears and lifting her tail. In the boma I had purposefully backed off whenever she did this, feigning fear to shore up her depleted confidence. That had worked at the time, but maybe a bit too well. Now I had to reverse tactics. She had to learn to respect me, and then all vehicles and humans.
Through trial and error I had learned several techniques on how to approach an aggressive elephant. One was to ignore it, which always worked wonders as it piqued curiosity and usually prompted a benign acknowledgement of my presence. But that would come later. In ET’s case, I decided she needed to be challenged directly. Mind games would probably not work here. I had to confront her head-on.
Obviously I couldn’t start on foot. Instead I would approach in the Land Rover, stop in front of her and wait, engine idling. Then as she started charging and got close I would jerk the Landy forward at her once or twice in rapid succession, just a yard or so, but usually that was all that was needed to make her stop and think again. To an elephant this is in effect saying, ‘I’m not messing about here; I’m ready to fight – so back off.’
This move always broke her aggression. Then I would lean out of the window and say in a firm but comforting voice, ‘ET, if you don’t mess with me we can be friends.’ I was in effect demonstrating my position of seniority in the herd’s hierarchy.
I swear Nana and Frankie knew exactly what I was doing with their unruly adopted child. If not, how do you explain the one instance when ET came at me out of the blue from a thicket, once again catching me on foot without an escape route? On this occasion I hadn’t seen her as I had approached cautiously thinking she was with the herd in the thick bush ahead when, unusually, she was on her own on the flank.
This time it was Frankie who reacted. She sprinted up alongside the galloping youngster and placed her tusks on ET’s rump, forcing her hindquarters sideways and down onto the ground. As ET sprawled in a cloud of dust, Frankie stood over her until ET clambered up in that ungainly way that fallen elephants do and sulked off to join the others. To have Frankie, who was once the definition of aggression, protect me was little short of phenomenal.
The third full-blooded charge was broken by Nana in a somewhat bizarre way. I was about thirty yards away from the herd just sitting and watching when ET started stampeding towards me. But to do so she had to run right past Nana, who was grazing a little way ahead. She heard the youngster coming and tilted her head. As ET began building up a head of steam Nana lifted her trunk and held a pose, waiting. When ET drew level she reached out and touched her ever so gently right in the middle of her forehead with the tip of her trunk.
ET stopped dead, as if she had been whacked on the skull with a sledgehammer. Yet all Nana had done was almost caress her. I had never seen that before.
All this activity would attract the attention of other animals and on this occasion it was a bachelor herd of kudu, with their spiralled horns so beloved by trophy hunters, who watched with interest. They stood stock still except for their twitching oval ears, taking it all in.
The kudu bulls were a reminder to me to be constantly alert. Wildlife is perpetually aware, always ready to flee or fight in an instant. It’s a life thrumming with eternal vigilance, absorbing every minuscule detail of one’s surroundings, continually assessing degrees of safety and danger. It’s knowing where or where not to be, perpetually analysing instinctual information so crucial for survival.
Every wild thing is in tune with its surroundings, awake to its fate and in absolute harmony with the planet. Their attention is focused totally outwards. Humans, on the other hand, tend to focus introspectively on their own lives too often, brooding and magnifying problems that the animal kingdom would not waste a millisecond of energy upon. To most people, the magnificent order of the natural world where life and death actually mean something has become unrecognizable.
I believed ET was making progress, and it appeared that working day after day with her was making a
difference.
I was wrong; it was only effective when she was actually with the herd. She had developed another tactic to give vent to her overpowering instinct to kill me. Two junior rangers and I were following the herd on foot from a safe distance. I knew now that Nana and Frankie were implicitly on my side in disciplining the youngster, so I felt relatively safe.
But ET knew otherwise. She stood no chance against me with the matriarch and her deputy around, so she decided to become clandestine. So she broke away from the herd, surreptitiously moving off to the side as the rest moved on and waited in ambush. Before I knew it, I heard that awful sound as the bush came alive with snapping branches and she galloped into the clearing, dipping her head in the awesome way that elephants do when they start a charge – her prize at last within grasp without Nana or Frankie to stop her.
I looked at the out-of-reach Land Rover behind me, and shouted at the two young rangers, ‘She’s coming! Don’t move! It’s OK … it’s OK! Just don’t move.’
Running away can all too easily convert a bluff into something lethal and even though it’s possibly the most frightening thing to do, a mock charge must be confronted at all costs.
‘No! No!’ I yelled at ET as she came on at us. ‘No!’ I raised my arms above my head screaming at her as she thundered on.
At the last moment she broke off, swinging away at a lumbering gait, trunk high.
Then despairingly I watched her turn a wide circle and turn back at us. ‘She’s coming again! Stand still … don’t move. Don’t move!’
But I was talking to myself. The two young rangers, having just witnessed their first-ever up close and personal elephant charge decided that to stand still for another was the most insane notion ever conceived. They disappeared so fast I thought they had been ‘beamed up’ to the top of the giant fig tree next to us.
That was fine for them, but it left me confronting a charging ET alone. Emboldened after seeing the rangers ignominiously bolting and clambering up the tree – the very scenario I was trying to prevent – she was now more determined to press home her advantage.
The moment I know when a situation gets hairy with elephants is when pandemonium switches into slow motion and the shrieking, mind-numbing fear leaches out of my body and is replaced by a blissful calmness. And so it was this time. I watched abstractly as I screamed at her until she was virtually on top of me. Then at the last moment she went swinging past. I can tell you that she very nearly didn’t pull out of that one.
She kept running, joining the herd who were ambling across to see what all the fuss was about. Personally, I thought that Nana could have reacted a little quicker.
I looked up at the two tree-hugging rangers. ‘Jeez! That was unbelievable!’ shouted one from the top of the tree, giving me a thumbs-up. ‘I can’t believe you made it. I thought you were a goner. Well done.’
Yeah, thanks.
The herd was getting closer. The still agitated ET was with them, so I hurried over to the Land Rover and drove under the giant fig, deliberately calling Nana and Frankie to me. I smiled coldly at the arboreal rangers who were watching the elephants milling beneath them and gave a return thumbs-up. I was going to teach these two runners a bush lesson, all right. By fleeing, they had put all of our lives at risk.
I talked to the elephants for a short while, jokingly chiding Nana for not being there for me and sternly chastising ET for what had happened. Then I drove off, leaving the rangers hanging on to branches with the herd right beneath them.
On my way home I had a treat which more than made up for the trauma of the charge: a pair of foraging honey badgers jaunted past, just yards from the vehicle. I don’t see them often, but they are among my favourite animals.
Bodies slung low to the ground, their thick fur is deep black except for the back which boasts a silver-white frost. The rich pelt is loose-fitting, allowing the badger to swivel its sinewy body almost 180 degrees out of a predator’s grip and counter-attack with its pickaxe teeth and bear-trap death grip. No predator in its right mind would ever be brave or dumb enough to try and grab one.
Bluntly courageous, the honey badger, or ratel as the Afrikaners call it, fears nothing; not humans, not lions, not anything. They are absolute dreadnoughts and you mess with them at your peril. I once heard from a fellow ranger of a pair foraging among logs and hidey-holes that concealed food and walked right into a resting pride of lions. The badgers didn’t even look up as they sauntered along while the scampering lions rapidly decided that ratel wasn’t on the menu. It was bizarre to see the kings of the jungle jumping up wide-eyed with alarm as these ferocious little warriors buzzed past.
About three hours later I was relaxing on the front lawn with a beer when the rangers got back, sweaty and bedraggled. I didn’t have to say anything.
Nor did they. They had learned their lesson.
chapter twenty-nine
It was spring again and the landscape sparkled in emerald and jade hues animated by the radiant colours of birds, flowers and trees. New life was everywhere, and everything seemed as it should be. Trees blossomed and the herds of buck, wildebeest and zebra were starting to put on weight, glowing with health as the pregnant females prepared to foal. But spring also brings the inevitable storms.
I felt the wind suddenly shift with a vicious gust and looked up to the sky. High above the eastern horizon bundles of cumulo nimbus towered into the stratosphere. A storm was gathering, a big one. I radioed Brendan and the rangers to warn them.
‘It looks like a number. Let’s get everyone in before it explodes.’
An hour later and we knew we were in for it. The wind had come up and it was as if a purple-grey blanket was being yanked across the heavens. It had been as hot as hell for the last two weeks and the rain gods were going to fix it their way.
The first peals of thunder rumbled in the distance and Max collapsed. He really hated thunder so I carried him inside where he sat staring forlornly at the wall. I made a mental note that if I ever had to burgle a home that had Staffordshire terriers, I would do so during a storm. Bijou was safely ensconced on her feathered pillow and I hoped her usual late-afternoon pre-snooze nap would not be disturbed too much.
Outside it was still darkening by the second when a jagged white bolt of lightning seared through the sky followed by an almighty clap of thunder overhead. I walked to the bottom of the garden and looked out over the reserve which was quickly disappearing behind the grey sheets of water rolling in over the hills. Watching a spectacular Zululand thunderstorm advance is an unforgettable experience.
The first drops splattered on the earth, exploding like little bombs kicking up dust. Then the full storm hit us; within seconds foliage that usually stood firm gave up and the wilderness sagged under the soggy onslaught.
The pelting rain formed into puddles and then streams swept across the ground taking the colour of the rich soil with them. These hundreds of rivulets fiddled along: moving, stopping, starting and merging with others, flowing, swelling then, raging down to the lowest point – the Nseleni River, which bisects the reserve.
I watched, happy, as it continued to bucket down. The dams would be full again and millions of little clefts, dips, fissures and depressions would trap the moisture that sustained life. We could never get enough rain. Despite its picture-postcard beauty, much of South Africa in reality is a land of long droughts punctuated by rain.
The house lights behind me flickered and then went out which was par for the course with a storm, and meant the phones were gone as well. Through the windows I could see Françoise lighting candles, even though it was still mid-afternoon.
I went inside and wrapped my two-way radio in plastic. I knew from experience that it would be our only outside link for the night.
An hour and a half later and my contentment was beginning to be tempered by a touch of concern. If anything, it was raining harder than before and there were now brown streams surging across all the roads.
‘Brendan, come
in, Brendan,’ I called on my radio.
‘Standing by,’ he replied.
‘How’s the river looking?’
‘Not bad. It’s coming up slowly but nothing serious.’
Brendan was at an outpost near the lodge keeping an eye on the Nseleni River. I have always longed for a gently flowing European-type river with steady banks, but this was Africa and our rivers are as volatile as nitroglycerine. One moment they’re barely moving, the next they’re a violent, muddy torrent that will sweep you twenty miles to the ocean in a heartbeat if you’re careless enough to get caught.
The sections of fence where the river entered and exited the reserve were particularly vulnerable to flooding. Here we had built sacrificial barriers designed to break away in a deluge, but until they were replaced they left huge gaps through which the elephants could escape. This meant we would have to move fast as soon as the storm was over.
Two hours later it was almost pitch-black, the rain was still bulleting down and everything had changed. Brendan’s voice staccatoed on the radio: ‘You’d better come down and have a look. The river is getting seriously out of control.’
‘How’re the sacrificial fences?’
‘Long gone.’
Françoise was sitting next to me. ‘I’m going down to the river to Brendan,’ I told her. ‘It’s come right up. I’ll go past the lodge and do a check while I’m there.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, moving Bijou, who was now having her pre-nocturnal sleep, off her lap. ‘I’m worried about the guests with no electricity. Some of them are real city people and I should be there with them.’
We grabbed raincoats and made a dash for the Land Rover, pulling out onto the road, which was now just a sloppy stream, causing the Land Rover to skid and slide all over the place. Above us almost continuous lightning illuminated in silver our savannah plains completely inundated with water.
The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild Page 23