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

went back to Nana, squeezing ointment into her exposed pupil, pulling her huge ear over her eye to protect it from the blossoming sun.

The other slumbering beasts got the same treatment and he methodically checked each one for injuries. Fortunately none had fallen awkwardly, breaking bones or tearing ligaments.

The ground team arrived and immediately reversed up to Nana. As the matriarch, they wanted her loaded first. This is done by unceremoniously winching the animal up into the air feet first and depositing the body at the rear entrance of the huge purpose-built truck. Then it is pulled and pushed into the truck by teams of men where it is revived by Dave with an injection of M5050. A five-ton slab of meat, muscle, blood and bone, hanging upside down is not a pretty sight, but it was done as gently and rapidly as possible. However without the specialized equipment this process took much longer than normal. While the larger animals were laboriously being loaded the effects of the drug started to wear off in some of those waiting their turn. When a drugged elephant starts waking up, you don’t waste time hanging around. As trunks started to twitch and elephants attempted to raise their heads, Dave was kept busy running from one to the next, administering additional drugs intravenously into a large vein pulsing in the ear. Once all were aboard and awake, the trucks revved off to Thula Thula. The animals recovered during the ninety-minute journey andalthough a little wobbly, Nana again led her family into the boma, followed by Frankie looking as defiant as ever. Their bid for freedom had, if anything, increased their resentment of captivity. I knew we would have a rough few months ahead of us.

As the capture team drove off, one game ranger shouted over his shoulder, ‘See you soon!’

This was no polite goodbye. His meaning was clear. He was saying these animals were bad news. He had no doubt that the herd would break out again and he would be back; this time with bullets, not darts. I felt like making an angry retort but couldn’t think of one quick enough.

The next day the wildlife dealer phoned, doubling his bid to $40,000 and repeating the offer of a tamer replacement herd. Again it sounded unreal, just too good to be true. Again I stalled, saying I would consider it. And again, I felt irritated by the offer. I couldn’t shake the belief that fate had a hand in all of this. Fate had sent me these elephants – I hadn’t asked for them. And maybe some things were meant to be.

Just before nightfall I took a drive down to the boma, parked some distance away and with great caution walked towards the fence. Nana was standing in thick cover with her family behind her, watching my every move, malevolence seeping from every pore. There was absolutely no doubt that sooner or later they were going to make another break for it.

Then in a flash came the answer. I decided there and then that contrary to all advice, I would go and live with the herd. I knew the experts would throw up their hands in horror as we had been repeatedly instructed that to keep them feral, human contact in the boma must be kept to the barest minimum. But this herd had already had too much human contact of the very worst kind, and their rehabilitation, if such a thing was even possible at all, called foruncommon measures. If I was to be responsible for this last-ditch effort to save their lives, I should do things my way. If I failed, at least I would have done my best.

I would remain outside the boma, of course, but I would stay with them, feed them, talk to them, but most importantly, be with them day and night. These magnificent creatures were extremely distressed and disorientated and maybe, just maybe, if someone who cared about them was constantly with them, they would have a chance. There was no doubt that unless we tried something different, they would continue trying to break out and would die in the attempt.

It boiled down to this: we had to get to know each other or else all bets were off. We didn’t have time for the ‘stand-off’ measures proposed by the experts. As I said to David one evening, we had to get the matriarch to trust at least one person. Unless that happened, the herd would always be suspicious of humans and would never settle down.

‘That human will have to be you,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘We’ll see.’

I discussed this with Françoise and she agreed that the conventional approach to settling in the animals didn’t seem to be working. I asked David if he wanted to come along and was answered by his broad smile. The boma was about three miles away from our house and so we packed the Land Rover with basic supplies. The vehicle would be our home for as long as it took.

I also brought along Max, who was always great company outdoors. When he was young and got his first taste of the bush he tended to chase everything in sight. This is a problem on a sanctuary as you don’t want dogs harassing animals or incessantly barking as it may attract predators. I had to show Max the errors of his youth fast.

He was a surprisingly quick learner, even though his first experience with wildlife had not been particularly pleasant.A large troop of vervet monkeys had made their home in the trees surrounding our home and delighted in taunting Max. They would gather on low hanging branches just out of his reach, tumbling over one another and screeching primate insults, sometimes even urinating on him or throwing dung at him with remarkable accuracy. Max would go berserk but was unable to respond to them.

For over a year this torment continued until one day something almost unheard of happened. A big young male