The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony (the ebook reader txt) 📕

Within minutes I had scrambled to raise a search party and we gathered at the boma, astounded at the damage. The large tambotie tree was history, its toppled upper section tenuously connected to the splintered stump by a strip of its bark oozing poisonous sap. The fence looked as though a division of Abrams tanks had thundered through it.

Standing next to the shattered tree was the astounded Ovambo guard who had witnessed the breakout. He pointed us in the direction he had last seen the elephants heading.

Almost at running speed, we followed the spoor to the boundary. We were too late. The border fence was down and the animals had broken out.

My worst fears were confirmed. But even so, how on earth had the animals got through an electrified fence pushing 8,000 volts so effortlessly?

We soon found out. Judging by their tracks, they had reached the eight-foot fence, milled around for a while andthen backtracked into the reserve until – uncannily – they found the energizer that powers the fence. How they knew this small, nondescript machine hidden in a thicket half a mile away was the source of current baffled us. But somehow they did, trampling it like a tin can and then returning to the boundary, where the wires were now dead. They then shouldered the concrete-embedded poles out of the ground like matchsticks.

Their tracks pointed north. There was no doubt that they were heading home to Mpumalanga 600 miles away. To the only home they knew; even though it was a home that no longer wanted them – and where, in all probability, they would be shot. That’s assuming game rangers or hunters didn’t get them along the way first.

As daybreak filled the eastern sky a motorist three miles away spotted the herd loping up the road towards him. At first he thought he was seeing things. Elephants? There aren’t meant to be any elephants here …

Half a mile or so later he saw the flattened fence and put two and two together. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to call, giving us valuable updated information.

The chase was on. I gunned my Land Rover into gear as the trackers leapt into the back.

We had barely driven out of the reserve when, to my astonishment, we saw a group of men parked on the shoulder of the dirt road, dressed in khaki and camouflage hunting gear and bristling with heavy-calibre rifles. They were as hyped as a vigilante gang and their excitement was palpable. You could smell the bloodlust.

I stopped and got out of the vehicle, the trackers and David behind me.

‘What’re you guys doing?’

One looked at me, eyes darting with anticipation. He shifted his rifle, caressing the butt.

‘We’re going after elephants.’

‘Oh yeah? Which ones?’

‘They’ve bust out of Thula, man. We’re gonna shoot them before they kill someone – they’re fair game now.’

I stared at him for several seconds, grappling to absorb this new twist to my escalating problems. Then cold fury set in.

‘Those elephants belong to me,’ I said taking two paces forward to emphasize my point. ‘If you put a bullet anywhere near them you are going to have to deal with me. And when we’re finished, I’m going to sue your arse off.’

I paused, breathing deeply.

‘Now show me your hunting permit,’ I demanded, knowing he couldn’t possibly have obtained one before dawn.

He stared at me, his face reddening with belligerence.

‘They’ve escaped, OK? They can be legally shot. We don’t need your permission.’

David was standing next to me, fists clenched. I could sense his outrage. ‘You know, David,’ I said loudly, ‘just look at this lot. Out there is a herd of confused elephants in big trouble and we’re the only ones here without guns. We’re the only ones who don’t want to kill them. Shows the difference in priorities, doesn’t it?’

Fizzing with anger, I ordered my men back into the Land Rover. Revving the engine and churning up dust clouds for the benefit of the gunmen staring aggressively at us we sped up the road.

The acrimonious encounter shook me considerably. Technically the urban Rambos were correct – the elephants were ‘fair game’. We had just heard on our two-way radios that the KZN Wildlife authorities, whom we had alerted as soon as the herd had broken out, were issuing elephant rifles to their staff. I didn’t have to be told that they were considering shooting the animals on sight. Their prime concern was the safety of people in the area and no one could blame them.

For us, it was now a simple race against time. We had tofind the elephants before anyone with a gun did. That’s all it boiled down to.

After another mile up the road the herd’s tracks veered into the bush, exactly as the motorist had told us. Thula Thula is flanked by vast forests of acacia trees and ugagane bush, which grows thickly with interwoven thorn-studded branches that are as supple and vicious as whips. It’s a riotous tangle of hostile thickets; lovely and wild to view, but torturous to track in. The wickedly sharp thorns scarcely scratch an elephant’s hide, of course, but to us soft-skinned species it was the equivalent of running through a maze of fish hooks.

The forest spread north as far as the eye could see. Could we find the animals in this almost impenetrable wilderness?

I looked up to the heavens, squinting against the harsh yellow-white glare that indicated we were in for a savage scorcher of a day and found my answer – air support. For us to have a fighting chance of catching the elephants before some gunman did, we had to have a helicopter tracking above. But to get a chopper up would cost thousands of dollars, with no guarantee of success. Also, most commercial pilots wouldn’t have a clue as to how to scout elephants hiding in such rugged terrain.

But there was one man I knew who could track from the sky – and, fortuitously,