The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild (7 page)

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Authors: Lawrence Anthony,Graham Spence

BOOK: The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild
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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 eager to lead the chorus of jeers slipped out of the tree, landing at Max’s paws. For a moment both animals looked at each other, stunned. Max circled silently as the male bared his teeth, then they pounced on one another. By the time I managed to get them apart Max had wrought revenge for those months of abuse.
A little later I went back to remove the monkey’s carcass. The troop was still there and as I approached they became extremely belligerent. I backed off and witnessed a strange ritual, something I had never seen before. The monkeys descended and silently gathered around their dead colleague. Then after a few moments they gently lifted the corpse and carried it from branch to branch, tree to tree, as a funeral procession into the distance. An hour or so later they were back. I had no idea what they did with the body.
However, it was a turning point for Max. From then on the vervets ignored him. A truce had been struck.
Max was a true bush dog. A hushed command from me would see him crouched by my side or on the Land Rover seat, fully alert but as silent as a gecko whenever an animal approached. I knew he would behave around the elephants.
To Max camping out with us at the
boma
would be another chapter in his adventurous life. We would be with the elephants around the clock, living in the bush, catnapping in the truck or stretching out under the stars with our wristwatch alarms set regularly to remind us to patrol the
fences. We would share the cold nights with them and we would sweat together in the searing days. It would be mentally and physically exhausting, particularly as the herd had already let us know in no uncertain manner that they didn’t want us around.
The first day we spent watching from a distance of about thirty yards. Each day we would get closer, but it would be a gradual exercise. Nana and Frankie watched us continuously, rushing up to the fence if they thought we were getting too close.
Night came, swiftly and silently as it does in Africa. There is perhaps half an hour of gloaming and then it is dark. But darkness can be your friend. The wilderness seethes with life as the nocturnal creatures scurry out from holes and trees and crevasses, brave in the knowledge that most predators are resting. The sky switches on its full power, untainted by urban electrical static. I never tire of watching the megawatt heavens, picking out the Zodiac signs and revelling in the glory of the odd shooting star.
David’s whisper woke me. ‘Quick. Something’s happening at the fence.’
I threw off my blanket and blinked to adjust my eyes to night vision. We crept up to the
boma
through the bush. I could see nothing. Then an enormous shape morphed in front of me.
It was Nana, about ten yards from the fence. Next to her was Mandla, her baby son.
I strained my eyes, searching for the others. Despite their bulk, elephants are difficult enough to see in dense bush during the day, let alone at night. Then I saw them, they were all standing motionless in the dark just a little way behind her.
I quickly glanced at my watch; 4:45 a.m. Zulus have a word for this time of the morning –
uvivi
– which means the darkness before the dawn. And it’s true. In the Zululand
bush, the darkness is most intense just before the first shreds of haze crack the horizon.
Suddenly Nana tensed her enormous frame and flared her ears.
‘Jeez! Look at her!’ whispered David, crouching next to me. ‘Look at the bloody size of her.’
Nana took a step forward. ‘Oh shit! Here she goes,’ said David, no longer whispering. ‘That bloody electric wire better hold.’
Without thinking I stood and walked towards the fence. Nana was directly ahead, a colossus just a few yards in front.
‘Don’t do it, Nana,’ I said, calmly as I could. ‘Please don’t do it, girl.’
She stood motionless but tense like an athlete straining for the starter’s gun. Behind her the rest of the herd froze.
‘This is your home now,’ I continued. ‘Please don’t do it, girl.’
I felt her eyes boring into me, even though I could barely make out her face in the murk.
‘They will kill you all if you break out. This is your home now. You don’t have to run any more.’
Still she didn’t move and suddenly the absurdity of the situation struck me. Here I was in thick darkness talking to a wild female elephant with a baby, the most dangerous possible combination, as if we were having a friendly chat.
Absurd or not, I decided to continue. I meant every word and meant for her to get what I was saying. ‘You will all die if you go. Stay here, I will be here with you and it’s a good place.’
She took another step forward. I could see her tense up again, preparing to go all the way. I too was ready. If she could take the pain and snap the electric wire the rest of the fence wouldn’t hold and she would be out. Frankie and the rest would smash through after her in a flash.
I was directly in their path, something I was well aware of. The fence cables would hold them for a short while but I would still only have seconds to scramble out of their way and climb a tree, or else be stomped flatter than an envelope. The nearest tree, a big acacia robusta with wicked thorns was perhaps ten yards to my left. I wondered if I would be fast enough. Possibly not … and when had I last climbed a thorn tree?
Then something happened between Nana and me, some infinitesimal spark of recognition, flaring for the briefest of moments.
Then it was gone. Nana nudged Mandla with her trunk, turned and melted into the bush. The rest followed.
David exhaled like a ruptured balloon.
‘Bloody hell! I thought she was going to go for it.’
We lit a small fire and brewed coffee. There was not much to say. I was not going to tell David that I thought I had connected for an instant with the matriarch. It would have sounded too crazy.
But something had happened. It gave me a sliver of hope.
 
Each day was the same. As the sun came up, the herd would start endlessly pacing up and down the length of the fence, turning on us and charging if we dared get too close, halting only at the electric cable. The naked aggression and agitation, the fiercest I have seen from any animal, blazed nonstop whenever we approached the fence. And they would glare ferociously as we backed off and watched from a distance.
As they were in a confined area we had to provide them with extra food. This posed a problem as whenever we attempted to get close to the fence to throw bales of alfalfa into the enclosure they ignored the food and erupted in paroxysms of rage.
The only alternative was to arrange bales at opposite
sides of the
boma
, and as I distracted the elephants at one end and they came at me, David – an immensely strong young man – would leap onto the back of the truck and toss more bulky bales over the fence on the other side.
Then they would spot him and turn and charge in his direction. As he backed off I would throw food over from my side. Then they would come at me, and David would continue. They would only eat when we moved well away.
The belligerence see-sawed back and forth until we finished. There was no doubt that in their fury they would have killed us were it not for the fence. The hatred was so concentrated that I began to wonder what had previously happened to these creatures, especially as Marion had told me that while still babies Nana and Frankie had had some human contact. As far as I knew, they hadn’t been physically maltreated, so was it something deeper? Was it some learned fear passed down from their ancestors who had been hunted to the brink? Was it because they instinctively knew humans were responsible for their confinement? That because of us they could no longer stride the great migration trails across the continent as their forebears had? Or was it simply that the death of their matriarch was the final straw?
I spent the rest of the day just watching them, trying to pick up some vibe other than rage. It now seemed that Frankie, the second-in-command, was the main aggressor. Nana was fractionally calmer – although by no means settled. Could I get through to her? I didn’t know; I just hoped.
David and I were pushing up to 2,000 pounds of food a day over the wire and we shed weight like a snake sloughs off its skin. In a week alone, we each lost ten pounds, most of it in sweat. If I hadn’t been so worried, I would have relished being in such good shape.
But one thing was certain: the elephants always knew David and I were around. I would spend hours walking
around the
boma
, checking the fence and deliberately speaking loudly so they heard my voice. Sometimes I would even sing, which David uncharitably remarked was enough to make even him want to jump straight onto the electric fence. If I ever caught Nana’s attention I would look directly at her and focus on positive gentle communication, telling her time and time again that this was her family’s new home and that everything she would ever need was here. Most of the time, though, I spent sitting or standing still at a chosen spot near the fence, purposefully ignoring them, just being there doing nothing, saying nothing, showing I was comfortable whether they were close by or not.
Slowly but surely we became an integral part of their lives. They began to ‘know’ us, but whether that was a good or bad thing, I wasn’t sure.
However, the alarming ritual that took place during
uvivi
, when they seemed most determined to break out, continued. Every morning at precisely 4.45 – I could virtually set my watch by it – Nana would line up the herd facing their old home in Mpumalanga. She would then tense up, yards from the fence, and for ten adrenalin-soaked minutes I would stand up to her, pleading for their lives, telling her that this was now their home. The words I used were unimportant as Nana obviously didn’t understand English; I just concentrated on keeping the tone as reassuring as I could. It was always touch-and-go and my relief as she ghosted back into the bush with her family was absolute.
When the sun eventually rose, David and I would retire to the truck, shattered by these tense stand-offs, saturated in sweat even in the early morning chill.
Silently David would start a small fire near the Land Rover and put the coffee pot on, each of us wondering what the day would bring. Why were they always so aggressive, even while we were giving them food? Why did they hate us so much? Elephants are intelligent creatures; surely they
must know by now that we meant no harm? I could understand them wanting to escape. Maybe I too would be frantic at being locked up … but this was something else. There had to be a way to breach this bulwark of torment.
‘Are we going to win?’ David once asked over a steaming mug, demoralized after yet another awful day. We were drinking coffee by the gallon to keep alert.
‘We have to,’ I replied, shrugging with despondency. ‘Somehow we just have to calm them down.’
The fact was I still didn’t know how to do it. All I did know was that the price of failure was unthinkable. But I was starting to wonder whether we could ever break through, whether we could ever settle them. The animosity was so intense that perhaps the barrier between us was impenetrable. Maybe too much damage had already been done.
I just didn’t know.
The psychic arrived at the
boma
after a particularly harrowing ‘dawn patrol’ with the herd again threatening to break through the fence. She came down from time to time and as I saw her coming I made a quick excuse to go and check fences on the other side, leaving her to David.
When I returned half an hour later, she had gone.
‘What did she want?’
‘Just to sprinkle some more of her good vibrations.’
David’s face was contorted and I could see he was battling valiantly to control a guffaw. ‘She also said she had communicated with the elephants and they had told her it was now safe for me to go in and walk with them.’
That set us off – perhaps it was the tension, but we broke up laughing so hard our stomachs hurt.
But when I stopped wheezing, I realized that as I was not convinced the psychic was helping matters it was best if she left us to our own methods.
I radioed Françoise and told her to tell the psychic politely that we had no further need of her services and to book a flight for her back to Johannesburg. As far as Françoise was concerned, that at least meant no more peanut-butter sandwiches on the menu.
However, in a bizarre way the psychic’s prophecy did come true several days later. We did indeed have to go into the
boma
with the herd.
Nana and Frankie still regularly toppled trees towards the fence, but the ones close enough to do any damage had all been felled. However, there was a particularly tall acacia in a thicket some distance away that they started working on. Initially I didn’t worry too much as it seemed too far from the electric barrier. But when it crashed down, it ‘bounced’ and some of the top branches snagged the wires, straining them to breaking point.
This caused an electrical short with lots of crackling which fortunately frightened the elephants off. Even more fortuitously, the wires didn’t snap so there was still current. But the elephants would soon sense that this was a weak link and launch an assault. All they had to do was bump the fallen tree forward, the wires would give and there would be no stopping them.
We had to act quickly. We examined all options but it soon became crystal clear that there was only one solution: someone had to sneak into the
boma
with a bowsaw and hack the branches off the fence. But who would do such a crazy thing, and how?
David stepped forward. ‘I’ll go – as long as you keep them off me,’ he said, eyeing the giants flapping their ears angrily on the other side.
I needed to think it through. David was volunteering for something I had never heard of being done before: getting into a sealed electrified enclosure with seven wild elephants and no quick escape route. It was insane, no matter how you looked at it.
I anguished for an hour or so. Could it be that by condoning this I was sending a young man to his death? What would I tell his parents, good friends of my family, if something went wrong?
Devising a plan would help me decide, so I concentrated on visualizing the scene. Then we would dry-run it until we had it right. David’s life depended on that.
First we would miss a feed, then once the elephants were really hungry we would throw bales of alfalfa over the other side of the
boma
to keep the animals occupied as far away from David as possible.
Then I would place two rangers with radios at the energizers to control the current. This would be switched off at exactly the moment David was ready to climb in. As soon as he was in the
boma
the electricity had to be turned back on, otherwise the animals might sense the power cut and break out while we were busy. This, of course, would leave David trapped with 8,000 volts imprisoning him with the elephants.
Third, a ranger would be with me as my ‘communicator’ to relay instructions and operate my radio. I would have the rifle, ready to shoot but only if David’s life was unquestionably threatened.
We rehearsed this several times until we were as prepared as we would ever be. David seemed calm – almost nonchalant – and I marvelled at his courage. He had been on the receiving end of the animals’ intense aggression every day for the past week, and he was still prepared to go in.
I gave the signal and the rangers started heaving food over the fence to entice the herd away from us and hopefully keep them engrossed long enough for David to finish the job.
As Nana led her hungry charges to the food bonanza, I looked at David. ‘You still want to do this?’
He shrugged. ‘If I don’t, we’ll lose them.’
‘OK,’ I said, sweating at the mere thought of the enormous risk he was taking.
I nodded to the ranger next to me who picked up his radio and shouted to the energizer crew: ‘Power off – go!’
David scaled the fence. Once he was in I threw over the bowsaw and gave the order: ‘Power on – now!’
The switches went up. David was now caged inside the
boma
.
I loaded the rifle, steadied the barrel on the Land Rover’s open door and zeroed in the sights on the animals on the far side.
David had his back to the herd and was sawing the offending branches with piston-pumping arms while I gave a running commentary from over the rifle sights. ‘Everything’s OK. No problem, no problem. It’s working. You are doing fine; it’s a piece of cake. Just a few more moments …’
In a blink everything changed. Frankie, who was slightly behind the rest of the herd, must have heard a noise as she suddenly looked up. Enraged that someone was in her territory, she broke into a charge … fast and deadly as a missile.
‘David, get out! Now! Cut the power! Cut the power! Now! Now! She’s coming!’ I yelled.
But the message didn’t get through to the rangers at the energizer. The drama of the charge had mesmerized the radioman next to me. He froze, completely stupefied by the dreadfully magnificent sight of an elephant in full charge.
David was trapped with Frankie hurtling at him like a rocket. He clambered wildly over the felled tree, grabbing at the fence as five tons of enraged elephant thundered up at impossible speed. He only had seconds to escape.
With my heart in my boots I swore and took aim. I knew it was too late – everthing had gone horrible wrong. I would put a bullet in Frankie’s brain but she was speeding at over thirty miles an hour and, dead or alive, her momentum would smash into David and he would be pulverized. No creature alive can survive being hit by an elephant.
My trigger finger tightened – and in the microsecond that I was about to squeeze I heard the foulest language you could imagine.
It was David, right next to me, cursing the radioman who hadn’t relayed the ‘cut power’ message. I jerked the rifle up as Frankie broke off and belted past us, trunk high, ears flared, turning tightly to avoid the wires.
Slowly I lowered the rifle and stared at David, dumbstruck. He had just scaled an eight-foot-high electrical fence. If he was shaking, it was with anger – not an overdose of electrons.
I know plenty of stories of people doing impossible things in dangerous situations, but 8,000 volts will smack you flat on your back no matter how much adrenalin is pumping. It’s got enough juice to stop a multi-ton creature – you don’t get bigger league than that.
Yet David had done it. Against infinitesimal odds, it seems he somehow missed touching all four of the prominent live wires in his frantic scramble for safety. How, we don’t know. And neither does he.
But one thing is certain: if David had been hurled backwards by the shock, Frankie would have been onto him, whether I killed her or not. She was too close and too fast. Nothing would have saved him.
As soon as everyone calmed down, David insisted on climbing back into the
boma
and finishing the job. I looked at him with total admiration; this young man had real cojones.
Frankie and the rest of the herd were again distracted by food at the far side, and David once more scaled the fence. But not before warning the radioman that if he messed up again, he would personally kill him.
‘But you’ll be dead,’ said one ranger.
David led the booming laughter.

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