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

He untied their hands. ‘It is over. Now you will eat meat from the nyamazane. The meat is good and you have a long journey ahead of you.’

He may as well have hurled a spear at their hearts. The poachers assumed they were about to be poisoned, just as the vultures had been. After all, didn’t this strange omnipotent sangoma in a hyena skin who held them captive actually fly with vultures? Weren’t they his children?

They clamped their mouths tight, moaning through their noses in abject horror. They were completely taken in and I felt sorry for them, uneducated and unknowing as they were, but we had to play this out fully if we were to have any chance of protecting our vulture population from obliteration.

‘You refuse to eat? You have killed his children, now you refuse his hospitality!’ Ngwenya thundered, shoving a chunk of meat towards one of the poacher’s mouths.

The poor man was beside himself with terror, spitting and coughing, twisting his head this way and that. Then he broke, wailing uncontrollably with terror that they had been forced to collect the vulture heads and that they were sorry for what they had done. And above all, how could they know the vultures were the children of the ‘sangoma’?

Bheki waited a little longer and then instructed them to stay where they were while he and Ngwenya walked back to the ‘sangoma’, deliberately leaving them alone.

Just as expected, the poachers bolted, running blindly into the darkening bush as fast as they could go. Bheki fired two shots into the ground to speed their journey. They wouldn’t stop until they were miles away and I hoped they made it home safely. In fact, I needed them to make it in one piece so they could report back to their sangoma that his stonesand gun as well as their hair and nails were now ‘owned’ by a powerful rival whose ancestors resided in vultures.

As soon as we were sure the poachers were well out of earshot the young ranger and I came out of hiding, laughingly congratulating our ‘sangoma’ as well as Bheki and Ngwenya for their superb performance that would have rivalled any of Hollywood’s A-listers.

‘We didn’t even need the hyena call,’ I said, slapping the young ranger on the back.

Then I asked the all-important question. ‘What do you think? Did they believe it?’

‘They will never come back here again,’ replied Bheki. ‘They believed everything.’

We gathered the four dead birds with the wildebeest, stacked wood up high and burned them all to cinders. Ngwenya then fetched the poachers’ bag of vulture heads. We counted seven, all liberally covered in salt. Some were more than a week old.

As the vultures’ bodies flared in the blazing wood, I began thinking of the huge Lotto winnings that perhaps I was watching go up in smoke. Even if I didn’t win the Lotto, the look on Françoise’s face would be worth a million bucks were she to find stinking vulture heads under my pillow.

chapter thirty-two

The afternoon breeze barely stirred the bush. Mnumzane was browsing languidly at the side of the road and I was about ten yards away, hanging around the Land Rover saying whatever came into my mind, both of us content in each other’s company. It was one of those days where you just felt like hanging out with friends, basking in the warmth of sunshine and companionship. As usual, I did all the talking and he did all the eating. But something had changed and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Max, who by now was used to having Mnumzane around, and in turn was totally ignored by Mnumzane, was under the Landy making a bed for himself, digging a hole to get to the cooler earth just below the surface.

I had come to see Mnumzane because one of the rangers had told of a huge ruckus among the herd that morning complete with prolonged trumpeting and screaming which could be heard a mile away. I had just checked on the herd, who were grazing a few miles off, and they seemed fine. Mnumzane too seemed calm … but there was something else; his once palpable insecurity seemed to have vanished. He seemed to have a new-found sense of self-assurance.

He walked over to me and I studied this huge bull elephant now standing not ten feet away. There was no doubt that he seemed more confident, more deliberate. Towering almost five feet above me, I needed every ounceof warmth and reassurance he dished out so liberally when we were together.

He then lifted his trunk towards me. That was extremely unusual. Mnumzane seldom put out his trunk, and if he did, he didn’t really like me to touch it, unlike Nana and Frankie who were quite comfortable with being tactile. He then turned and moved off into the savannah. That too was different, for I was always first to leave our bush sessions with Mnumzane invariably trying to block my way by standing in front of the Land Rover.

Later on, as the setting sun cloaked the hills in reds and gold, the elephants visited the waterhole just in front of the electric strand at the lodge. This was always a treat for the guests, to watch these lords of the wilderness up close, and it was then I saw exactly why Mnumzane was now so selfassured.

The herd was drinking and splashing around when Mnumzane emerged imperiously out of the bush and with head held high he moved swiftly toward the waterhole. Now that’s strange, I thought. Usually he skulks around the periphery. What’s going on here?

Nana looked up and saw him and – to my intense surprise – with a deep rumbling she moved off, calling the herd away.

Too late. Mnumzane, picking up speed, singled out Frankie – the herd’s prizefighter – and smashed into her so hard that the blow thundered across the bush, smashing her backwards and very nearly