Field guide recalls elephant encounter
The road was so narrow, the thorn bush was scraping my vehicle.
EDITOR – I just read Simon Bloch’s article in the Sunday Tribune about a bull elephant that was killed in Hluhluwe Game Reserve on Friday, which is the same day I had an encounter with a bull elephant in the park.
On the same day, my three friends and I were on a very narrow road in the Imfolozi section of the park.
The road was so narrow, the thorn bush was scraping my vehicle. When I looked up, a huge bull elephant was approaching the car in the opposite direction. I had nowhere to go and his ‘no nonsense’ attitude said I must reverse.
The problem was I had a trailer hitched to the back of my car so my reversing was very slow. His forward march and my shaky reversing was getting me nowhere. With my head over my left shoulder, I was trying to keep the trailer as straight as I could, without much success. Then my friend sitting next to me said he is gaining. With my heart in my mouth and hands starting to shake on the steering wheel, I made a big mistake, I tried to reverse faster. With that I jackknifed the trailer completely blocking this narrow road. The bull elephant was now only metres away. My colleagues in the rear seat were starting to panic and I heard the rear door open as they wanted to escape the vehicle before they visualised this huge animal attacking us. I screamed at them to stay in the vehicle as by leaving, they would change the profile that the elephant sees and could be seen as a threat to him.
The elephant was now standing stationary next to the bull bar at the front of the vehicle. Man and beast locked together with nowhere to go. The elephant’s trunk came over the vehicle, seeming to check if we were a threat.
Looking out of my window all I could see now of this elephant was his knees. Then something incredible happened – the elephant stepped sideways and smashed the thorn bushes next to him, allowing him to just move off the road. He stood there, now two metres off the road in the newly cleared bush and shook his head back and forth, looking at us. Looking forward I could now see the road clear ahead of us and very slowly, with shaking hands on the steering wheel, we edged forward to move away from this majestic creature.
Elephants are majestic, intelligent creatures with a lovely sole, Looking back, that elephant meant us no harm we just happened to meet on a lonely, narrow road.
The contact between us will stay with me for the rest of my life.
DAVE JOSEPH
KZN Tourism
FGSA Field Guide
