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

Dylan couldn’t hide his disappointment and had walked off looking for their spoor. Soon we heard his low whistle.

‘Dylan’s calling us,’ I said. ‘He’s found something.’

We pushed through the undergrowth and eventually found him crouched in a clearing. ‘Rock python,’ he whispered excitedly and spread his arms wide. ‘Huge.’

Thula Thula and its surroundings are prime python territory, so much so that the snake has become the totem of the local Biyela tribe who believe that the spirits of their ancestors sometimes return in the form of this magnificent constrictor. Whenever a python is seen in the village, instead of killing it as they would do with any other snake, the people gather to watch and sometimes tie a goat to a stake as an offering. Rock pythons are Africa’s largest snakes and can be extremely aggressive when disturbed. And these are big reptiles we’re talking about; ten or twelve feet long is not unusual.

But what Dylan had found astounded me. It was the biggest python I have ever seen, its golden brown body with tan and olive blotches stretched at full length in the bush.

However, that’s not what Dylan was looking at. Instead he was pointing elsewhere, and as we moved across I saw another snake – even bigger. This was a once-in-a-lifetime sighting and of course no one had a camera. It’s axiomatic that if you want to see something really special in the bush, you leave your camera behind. Both snakes were resting, immobile after a day’s basking in the sun and we were able to walk up reasonably close without alarming them. Dylan paced them out. The first was fifteen feet long, the second a super trophy size seventeen feet.

‘That puts paid to my snake reference book,’ said David. ‘It says that pythons only grow to fourteen or fifteen feet.’

We gazed at these incredible specimens, each as thick as a muscular man’s arm, until it got dark, then continued our vigil by torchlight, leaving only when the batteries started running low – not surprisingly none of us wanted to be anywhere near these monsters in the dark.

The next day when we returned they were gone.

I have not seen a snake of that magnitude since. And probably never will. But it was heartening to know they were out there, safe, protected and breeding.

chapter nineteen

Each day I made a trip into the bush to spend time with the herd, not only to check on their habits and movements, but because it was so invigorating being out there with them. Most importantly I wanted to continue investigating some strange aspects of their communication that intrigued me. I had opened the door to a brave new world and wanted to take advantage of every minute in the bush alone with them.

I was on foot searching for elephants on a hot afternoon, when for a split second it felt as if the herd was right there, as if I had been daydreaming and walked into them. I quickly gathered myself and looked around, but surprisingly they were nowhere in sight.

A little later it happened again. It was the lightest touch and then it was gone. Again I looked around but there was still no sign of them. Something inexplicable was going on. I was surprised that in all the time I had spent with elephants I had never noticed anything like this before.

So I waited, going back to doing exactly what I had been doing before – just being part of the bush, and not expecting anything to happen. Suddenly, I got it again, a strong sense of anticipation that the herd was close by, and with that Nana emerged out of a nearby thicket followed by the others. I was gobsmacked. I had somehow picked up that they were there well before seeing them.

In time I found that this experience also manifested itselfin reverse. Sometimes while searching for them I would eventually realize that they were not in the area at all, that they were somewhere else. Not because I couldn’t find them, but because the bush felt completely empty of their presence.

After a couple of weeks of practice I started getting the hang of it and, eventually, under the right circumstances, it became easier and easier to find them. Somehow I had become aware that elephants project their presence into an area around them, and that they have control over this, because when they didn’t want to be found I could be almost on top of them and pick up nothing at all. A little more experimentation and research and it became clear what was happening. Much like a lion’s roar at an audible level, the herd’s deep rumblings, well below human hearing, were permeating the bush for miles around them, and I was somehow picking this up even though I couldn’t hear it at all. They were letting everything and everyone know where they were in their own elephantine way, in their own language.

One morning while driving gingerly along a boulder-strewn track I sensed that elephants were around and then heard a distinct trumpeting. I stopped and a few minutes later it echoed again, this time considerably closer. Suddenly a breathless Mnumzane lumbered out of the woodland, stopping right in front of the Land Rover, cutting me off and staring intently at me through the windscreen. He had never come that close before.

He was absolutely calm and I sat in the vehicle, my heart beating loudly. Twenty minutes later I was much more relaxed and he was still there, browsing all around the Landy and showing no inclination to leave.

Then the radio squawked into life and he tensed at the guttural invasion of the elemental serenity. It was the office, requesting that I return to base. But as I started pulling off Mnumzane quickly moved in front of the vehicle, andwithout malice, deliberately blocked the way. Puzzled, I switched the Land Rover off and he nonchalantly returned to his grazing. However, as soon