Elephant Dawn Page 8
December heralds the beginning of summer, and the veld is instantly transformed. The terrible harshness of the long dry is forgotten. Soaking rain replaces the often-violent storms of late October and November. The longed-for changes are rapid and wondrous, the metamorphosis spectacular. Bare, sandy soil has been replaced by lush, green grass. The trees and shrubs are suddenly, once again, in full green leaf. Surface water sits where dust devils recently swirled and mushrooms push their way through elephant dung. Dusty mineral-lick excavations—created by the elephants—have been transformed into small pans, where lions love to lap and elephants love to play, despite them now being home to crocodiles. It’s nothing short of miraculous to see the veld reborn.
It’s such a rejuvenating time right now—for the elephants, for all of the animals, and for me.
LOOPY
2003
With renewed inner strength, I decide to go alone to visit Andy’s grave.
It’s something that I do every now and again, when I find the courage to face it all, just to say hello. I went with Lol and Drew one time, and we lay together under the canopy of the huge ebony tree that protects Andy, staring up into its branches and marvelling at its magnificence. Now we call this place Andy’s tree, rather than Andy’s grave. Still struggling to come to terms with the fact that his body is a part of this tree, I lie flat on my back on the ground beneath it, and tell him my stories. I tell him about all sorts of things, including the bateleurs. I’m having frequent encounters with these large black eagles—adorned with stunning bright red on their face and legs—as they glide effortlessly through the sky with wing tips pointing upwards.
‘I’m seeing bateleurs at my most vulnerable times,’ I say to Andy, ‘and when I do, it’s really strange, but I think of you.’
It’s not something that I have yet admitted to anyone else. It seems a wee bit weird, even to me. It’s a little like the sign I asked Andy for the day after his funeral; just something to let me know that everything was okay. I was instantly, and mysteriously, rewarded with an extraordinary shaft of bright light that fell to earth in front of me. Enveloped in warmth, I had enough time to take a photograph, and then the light was gone. In the presence of others, I dismissed this as coincidence but I was never really convinced.
Later, I find out that the Shona people of Zimbabwe—from the eastern side of the country, where Andy’s family live—believe the bateleur to be a spirit messenger. Of course, I think to myself. A spirit messenger! What else could this bird be? They’re said to bring protection and good fortune. Now, they always bring a smile to my face. When I see one, I think of Andy with a hand on my shoulder, making sure that everything is okay.
When I first arrived to live in Hwange, I sprinkled some of my beloved dog’s ashes close to Andy’s grave. Chloe had been the only child in my life plan and, like Andy, was a profoundly important presence in my life. ‘Please be careful not to step on her,’ I said to Andy at the time. I’d spoken these words to him once before, when he was racing down the flight of stairs inside my Brisbane home, almost colliding with Chloe. She seemed to always be under his feet.
I sprinkled the rest of Chloe’s ashes at Makwa pan, one of my favourite waterholes inside Hwange National Park. I pass Makwa on my way home from Andy’s tree. It’s a place where I’ve spent time with many a friend, and where I’ve always enjoyed especially memorable wildlife encounters. Today I’m by myself, just me and my memories. I cherish these alone times and hold them close to my heart.
The roller-coaster ride continues with more snared animals and more snare removals, interspersed with days of sheer ecstasy documenting the lives of my elephant friends.
I am particularly devastated when Lady’s family is struck, yet again, by the horrific snaring. There’s an aching numbness in my chest; my spirit once again stricken. This time it’s Lady’s nearly five-year-old son, Loopy, who has a deadly wire wrapped very tightly around his head and neck.
I’ve been waiting for this ghastly day, when poachers injure another member of my favourite family. Loopy was named for his cheeky, irrepressible nature. Now, unless we can remove the wire, it seems certain that he will die an agonising death.
I watch Loopy in disbelief. His spirit is clearly stricken also. I talk to him, willing him to somehow break the snare before it kills him. Three thin strands of wire are acting like a sharp knife, slicing into his innocent little face and neck. Lady is the only adult present. Except when mating, I’ve never encountered her without another adult female from her family close by. Is it so distressing for the family that she’s chosen to bear this burden alone?
I close the door of my 4x4, trying to shut out this tragic sight, and hurry to arrange the approvals necessary to be able to remove the snare. The next day I sight the partial family group again, but I’m helpless and distraught when there is no one available to do the darting. I’m exhausted by the emotions of this awful discovery, but I continue to search for Lady’s family every day, in the heartfelt hope that we will not be too late.
Three long weeks crawl by without any success. The anguish I’ve felt since first seeing Loopy’s snare has been hard to endure. I have searched for him constantly, seen him occasionally, and each time his wound looks worse. There’s never anyone available to dart. I’ve lost patience, and now I am losing heart.
But sweet reprieve eventually comes.
I last saw Lady’s family two days ago, and for the second day running I’ve waited impatiently in the same place, on a calculated guess (despite no fresh elephant spoor heading my way), that Lady and her family will return to this pan. They arrive just before 1 p.m. With a knot in my stomach, I radio for assistance. Unfortunately Greg isn’t available, but another darter is able to come immediately. It will take him twenty minutes to get to me. Meanwhile, someone else is hurrying to collect the required National Parks’ scout.
Things don’t start out too well. Lady’s family drink from the cement trough where fresh water flows before running into the waterhole, and within five minutes they’re starting to move off into thick bush, where it will be impossible to dart. Fortunately, I’d anticipated that this might happen. Help is still fifteen minutes away, with another fifteen minutes needed to prepare the required darts. I’d collected some Acacia erioloba pods that had fallen to the ground. They’re a natural food treat elephants love. Reversing slowly for several hundred metres, I entice Lady and her family, metre by metre, up the sandy road by throwing velvety grey pods just in front of my bonnet. With Lady in the lead, all family members follow, picking up these pods as they lumber my way. I figure that if I can get them to the open mineral lick area they will feed there on the natural mineral salts, at least for a while. Thankfully, I am right. When the darter arrives, this is where he finds us.
There’d already been some debate over how this darting should best be done. We are all still feeling our way with darting within family groups. Right now some darters believe it’s always necessary to dart the mother elephant as well as the snared calf. This assumes that someone can in fact instantly, and accurately, identify the mother of the calf, which in ‘unknown’ families is not always as simple as it may sound, since young elephants will often mingle with their cousins beside an aunt. An isolated observation of an adult female close to or even suckling a calf doesn’t mean that this calf is necessarily hers. Over the years I’ve come to believe, especially with these well-known elephants, that every immobilisation scenario is different, and all of the known facts need to be taken into account before deciding on a plan of action.
I know Lady very well by now. I don’t believe that she should be, or needs to be, darted—a recommendation that was earlier rejected by this particular darter and some of his companions. None of these men have spent any significant time with elephants. Even so, they think my input irrelevant. This is something that I am getting used to. To some, I’m just a lone, unqualified woman without the right letters after my name. But I understand well, as they do not, that Lady is suc
kling a younger calf and has recently been mated. She has three calves in fact, one younger than Loopy and one older, and perhaps an unborn baby, dependent on her for their very survival. Lady is one of the best known and most habituated Presidential Elephants. I don’t want to jeopardise Lady’s life, and therefore the lives of her offspring, unnecessarily.
Of course it is the darter who has the final say. Despite my explanations he is still reluctant to dart only Loopy, however he finally agrees. A reversal can quickly be administered in the event that this turns dangerous, and I am prepared to be the only one out of the vehicle attending to Loopy if need be, putting only my own life in danger.
While the darts are being prepared, Lady, Loopy and the rest of the family enjoy the mineral lick. But time is running out. The family is again preparing to move off into thick bush. A few more acacia pods that I throw on the ground encourage Lady, with Loopy by her side, to stay for a few minutes longer while the darter finally takes aim. I can’t hold them any longer. Just metres from the edge of thick bush, the dart—its contents determined weeks earlier based on Loopy’s approximate age and weight—hits his rump with precision.
As I had hoped, Lady is preoccupied with looking after her youngest daughter, and the other family members simply follow her away into the bush. The most habituated family in the Presidential herd, they are not thrown into panic. When Loopy goes down, two family members come to help him, but as we approach in two vehicles they also move off without fuss towards Lady. Now we are alone with Loopy.
He has gone down face forward onto his chest (a potentially deadly position) and so, without a moment’s hesitation, five hundred plus kilograms of elephant is quickly rolled over so that he is lying on his side. In this position he’ll have no respiratory distress. I am thankful that he isn’t a full-grown multi-tonne elephant. With armed support standing guard, the snare is quickly cut, the deep wound washed and antibiotics injected. It’s a scene that has repeated itself endlessly in my mind for weeks, day and night. Now it is finally happening. Thankfully no elephants bother us, but the unpredictability of the environment we’re working in never leaves my mind. It is not Lady who concerns me so much but rather her sister Leanne, who can sometimes be a little more aggressive than the others.
Standing now in my 4x4, I wait anxiously for the reversal drug to take effect. Still lying on his side, Loopy takes a trunkful of sand to dust his wound, and eventually gets to his feet. Loopy knows my voice well. In the months prior to him being snared, he had begun standing for long periods, and sometimes slept, right beside the door of my vehicle. I croon to him while he stands gently between our two vehicles, dusting himself. I suppose there is a comforting familiarity there.
He rumbles constantly, with family members answering him. I wonder, as I do so often, what the elephants are saying to each other in their secret conversations. ‘It’s okay, guys, I’m fine. Really, no big deal. I’m fine.’
He makes no attempt to move off, content to stay where he is. In the end, we leave before he does, to give him some space. Louise and son Limp are the relatives nearest to him. Loopy joins them in the shade of a tree. The other vehicles and helpers depart, and I sit alone with the elephants, talking to them. There is no sign of Lady. Within half an hour they’ve all taken off into the thick bush and I can no longer see or follow any of them.
The operation has gone extremely well, but I am never content until I know that the entire family has reunited. The next day at 10 a.m. I return to the same pan.
Unusually for this time of the morning there are already close to one hundred elephants around the pan. Searching nervously, I find Lady, but there is no Loopy close by. My heart sinks. Although not his normal behaviour, Loopy had rarely left his mother’s side while the tight head-snare had been debilitating him. I switch off my vehicle and watch Lady and her family walk off in front of me, after first stopping by my door to say hello.
I can’t see Loopy.
While begging whoever is listening to let Loopy be there, he suddenly appears from the mass of elephants, hurrying towards my vehicle. I am unspeakably relieved. And Loopy’s own relief is obvious. Everything about him suggests that he is already feeling remarkably better. He clearly no longer feels a need to stay right beside his mother. He’s holding his head higher than he has during the past three weeks when the tight wire was slicing his neck, and happily ventures his little trunk towards my outstretched hand before running playfully to catch up with his family.
This encounter delights and encourages me. Once again, my resolve to keep working with these elephants is strengthened. My heart fills with a peace that I have not felt in months. Distressed and preoccupied by all of the tragic snaring I’d been encountering, it is only now that I realise just how tired I am.
Loopy’s snare wound is deep on the top of his head, and nasty on the side of his face and under his chin, but so long as no further infection sets in, I believe he will survive.
And survive he does.
While we were rescuing Loopy, Jabulani and the rest of the estate anti-poaching team were sitting out an ambush. Three days later the poachers—a man and his wife—are caught. They’re clean, well dressed and obviously healthy. He is employed. I feel no sympathy. I look at their snares before he is ordered to destroy them. They are set at a height just right to snare an antelope—or the head of another young elephant. They’re poachers, and they’re breaking the law. They deserve whatever punishment the authorities deem appropriate. I know that the sentences are always much too light, but at least there’s the added shame of being a convicted poacher.
With the sun setting on another day, I sit on the rooftop of my 4x4 and drink an Amarula. Indeed, I drink a few. I think about how I feel about all of this. What I decide is this: elephants are to me the essence of wild freedom. I am adamant that they do not deserve such agony and disturbance at the hands of humans.
It is obvious, though, that not everyone agrees with me.
HONORARY ELEPHANT
2003
All of those who’ve had the privilege of meeting Lady agree that she’s an unforgettable elephant. She is huge and can be boisterous. She’s unquestionably intelligent and powerful in more ways than one. She’s wildly entertaining and affectionate to boot. Above all else, she is dignified and a great leader to her family.
Lady is the first wild elephant who has truly accepted me into her world, who has consented to my touch and responds with genuine excitement to my presence. This isn’t something that I set out to achieve; it has happened by chance over the course of the two and a half years that I’ve been spending with her and her family.
One memorable day, when Lady was once again right next to my 4x4, I leaned out of the window and very tentatively placed my hand on her tusk. It was an instinctive moment; the same way that I might greet a human being. She didn’t flinch or react in any obvious way, and I left my hand there for several minutes. This brief physical connection with my friend left my spirit soaring.
Since then, Lady has always gone out of her way to come and stand beside my vehicle, her trunk swinging like a pendulum as she hurries my way. Then she rumbles. Is she talking to me, I wonder? I always look up into her amber-coloured eyes, and place my hand on her tusk. She’s an incredibly gentle giant, with an extra-special quality that always causes me to pause, and to breathe in the magic surrounding me.
Another day, through the window of my vehicle I placed my hand, so very gently, against her trunk. It felt as warm as the Kalahari sand, much rougher than I thought it would be, and deeply grooved. Lady tensed just a little at first, not knowing what this strange human appendage was against her skin, but she didn’t try to evade my tender touch. In that moment, time stood still. A rush of adrenalin shot through me as we two creatures—such unlikely friends—were momentarily blended. I felt as if I was dreaming. Imagine! Such trust from a fully grown wild elephant! Holding her gaze, I talked and sang to her, as we placed our complete trust in one another. The reality slowly beg
an to sink in and tears sprung to my eyes as I struggled to comprehend the enormity of the privilege.
Now—incredibly—I can rub my hand up and down Lady’s trunk. I apply as much pressure as my own strength allows. She seems to revel in it, as do I. Sometimes when I rub her trunk hard, she concertinas it. It’s like an accordion being played vertically, and I get the feeling she’s about to sneeze.
I know that Lady is a wild, free-roaming jumbo who could kill me with one swipe of her mighty trunk. I continually remind myself that this is a truly wild elephant and, always attempting to read her mood while also keeping a close eye on her body language, I never push her level of tolerance, nor do I ever force myself upon her.
Sometimes when I croon to Lady and look up into her long-lashed eyes, her temporal glands erupt with liquid. It isn’t a trickle, but more like a bubble of liquid that springs up from within, before streaming down both sides of her face. It is a sign of excitement. It’s obvious to me that both Lady and I thoroughly enjoy our encounters with each other.
Friends who witness these encounters suspect that Lady, wild and free, has bestowed on me the status of ‘honorary elephant’. I am moved beyond words.
Both Cynthia Moss and Joyce Poole have their own very close relationships with the elephants of Amboseli National Park in Kenya. They’ve been studying the grey giants of Amboseli since the 1970s and are legendary in the world of elephants. I decide that it’s worth spending time and money to visit them and learn what I can from them. When I travelled as a tourist, I loved the wide open spaces of East Africa and I’m keen to return. I stay overnight in Joyce’s spectacular home, full of huge panes of undressed glass that afford panoramic views over Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. I’ve named a special J family elephant after Joyce. Even so, it’s somewhat surreal being in the home of this elephant legend.