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

was important, that I needed her. The words meant nothing, but would she get the emotion, the urgency?

Amazingly she started following, and eventually just kept on coming without me even calling, her family following fractionally behind. I looked in my rear-view mirror. There were nine elephants following me; I was for a fleeting instant the pachyderm Pied Piper. Nana loomed in the rectangular reflection, the others behind her, obliterating all else. Deep in the African bush I had a herd of wild elephant actually following me because I wanted and needed them to. It was all so implausible – and yet it was happening. God I loved them.

Three miles later we were at the boma. Unbelievably, the herd had stayed the course.

I stopped thirty yards from the fence and Nana came towards me, paused for a moment, and then saw the youngster. She looked back at me, as if, perhaps, to acknowledge why I had called her, then went to the fence and emitted a long set of stomach rumbles.

ET was as still as a tree, peering at the herd through the dense foliage, lifting her trunk to get their scent. For some moments this continued. Then suddenly, excited as a teenager at a funfair, she came out and ran to where Nana was standing at the fence. These were the first of her own kind she had seen in a year.

Nana lifted her python-thick trunk over the electric fence, reaching out to ET who responded by raising her own trunk. I watched entranced as Nana touched the troubled youngster who demurely acknowledged the matriarch’s authority. By now the rest of the inquisitive herd had come forward and Frankie, who was also tall enough to get her trunk over the electric strand, did so as well. There they all stood, their stomachs rumbling and grumbling in elephant talk.

This went on for an animated twenty minutes as scents and smells were exchanged and introductions made. What happened next though left me in no doubt that ET’s predicament was over. A solution found.

Nana turned and moved off, deliberately walking past the gate where she had originally pushed over the poles to get out. I had no doubt she was showing ET the exit and simultaneously letting me know to open the gate. I had asked for her help and she had taken her decision: ‘Let her out!’

But with all the elephants around we could not get anywhere near the gate and could do no more than watch as ET moved along with them on the inside of the boma fence until she reached the far end and could go no further. She backtracked up and down the fence, desperately trying to find a way to join them and ‘honking’ in despair. It was heartbreaking to watch.

But would she allow us? No chance. Every time we approached the gate she thundered across, enraged at our presence, as if we were preventing her from joining the others.

Eventually she stopped, exhausted by her continuous stampedes, and we were able to move in and quickly remove the horizontal gate poles and electric strands.

Nana, who had been waiting nearby in thick cover watching all this, then came back out of the bush around the other side of the boma with her family following in single file. Deliberately and slowly, she once more walked past the now-open gate. ET rushed out of the thicket but again missed the exit and followed them on the inside of the fence until she could go no further. Her despair was wrenching but there was nothing we could do until she learnt that the gate was her sole exit point.

This time Nana didn’t wait. She kept going towards the river and just as I thought we would have to close the bomafor the night, ET backtracked to the gate and was gone, her trunk twitching just inches off the ground as she chased after the herd’s scent in a gaiting run.

We switched off power to the boma fences and packed up. Half an hour later as we were driving home we saw them moving away across the open savannah. They were still in single file but already the pecking order had been established. ET was second-last, holding the tail of the elephant in front with Mnumzane behind her. He was resting his trunk on her back as they moved along. Comforting her.

Walt Disney himself could not have scripted a better ending.

chapter twenty-six

Françoise named our new boutique hotel the Elephant Safari Lodge and threw herself into making a success of it. To keep the bush atmosphere she limited accommodation to just eight luxury rooms spread out around a large thatched lodge on the banks of the Nseleni River. Most courageously she refused to bring in professional help, preferring instead to train Zulus from the next-door village for all positions. The Franco – Zulu communication challenges that ensued provided daily entertainment for David, Brendan and me.

‘No TV, no newspapers, no cellphones,’ she insisted, ‘this must be a natural wilderness experience, an antidote to city life.’ And it was, complimented by the fine food which she produced and presented with all her inherent flair. I balanced this against the knowledge that if I hadn’t met Françoise, the guests would probably be sitting on log stumps around a fire with a sausage on a stick and using a bush toilet.

The lodge changed everything for both of us. It was a long day, starting with the early morning game drive and ending only when the last guest went to bed. I quickly learned that in today’s world, if you want to survive as a conservationist, you had better learn all about wines and how to mix a good Martini.

All the while I knew the cattle cabal was still lurking in the background trying to disrupt the Royal Zulu game-reserveproject, but being busy with the introduction of ET into the herd, I couldn’t give it much thought.

Then my mother phoned from her office in Empangeni, her voice