Hide and seek with the elephants

Once you get used to the fact that there are many things around you that can kill or at least considerably damage you, you stop being ready to fight-or-flee at all times (even while having a wee, because stuff can crawl into the bathroom). But being charged by an elephant, crossing rivers with crocs and then walking along fresh lion tracks on the river sand bars, finding a tiny white spider in your camera case whose bite launches you to the nearest hospital, or just forgetting to put on (enough) sunscreen and getting roasted by the African sun, quickly brings you back to reality.

The listed experiences are true, and you have to keep your eyes, ears and nose sharp at all times to avoid lethal consequences. Especially when it comes to those sneaky elephants. 

They’re big and they usually break things as they go so you’d expect to see or at least hear them coming. But the shrubs are really thick and their soft feet suppress even the loudest sounds of trampled trees, branches and grasses. So you don’t know they’re close until they’re right at you. 

Been there, done that – my guard on the watch, me busy setting up the transect line, elephant out of the bush. I was already running and whisper-shouting “elephant!” to the guard before he realized what was happening. Luckily, at that moment the elephant had already decided it scared us well enough and disappeared again. 

As if it was a common shrew and not the biggest guy on land.

But that was the second time I got surprised like that – the first time was a lot more terrifying, even though it happened while driving. Just after I made a turn, I saw a little red tourist car standing on the road. Nothing alarming, it is a completely normal sight here in the park; tourists stop their vehicles whenever and wherever they feel like, observe the giraffe kilometres away, study the map, have a cup of tea, change their babies’ dippers. So we slowly, carefully pass them (because for some reason they think they’re the only people in the park and you never know when they’d start driving all over the road again) and continue with our way. 

However, that that particular car had a proper reason to be motionless – it was on a look out for a large male elephant. Though, it didn’t realize the bull was camera shy. Just before the red car would become the elephant’s new football, another car (with me in it) drove around the corner and distracted the bull. He shifted his rage towards the approaching vehicle and started charging. And there I was, still in the process of overtaking the red car, suddenly being charged by a furious elephant. 

Break, reverse, full gas! With the bull just after (in front of) you, it’s too scary and too dangerous to be looking forwards, so I kept my eyes on the road behind me and kept on reversing until the car engine smelled bad. My driving skills did not let me down and the elephant and his bad mood got left behind.

I was thinking about those two incidents afterwards and came to the conclusion that the elephants were probably just playing. And their favourite game is hide and seek. I guess I lost because I found only two of them. But you never know, they might be very patient and still waiting there for me, hiding in the bushes.