andersonbowen.comBLOG

we are unintentionally creating an elephant motif in our house. the long wall in the main room is covered from edge to edge with an elephant printed batik hung by a bamboo rod taken from the bamboo patch in our garden. 8 purple elephants marching left to right across our wall. there’s an elephant stuffed animal and a new soapstone elephant carving on the bookshelf. and there is soon to be a 2 m x 1.3 m printing of an elephant photograph phil took in qenp hanging above the reading chair. that’s almost life-size if you were wondering how big 2 m x 1.3 m actually is (approximately 6.5 ft x 4.25 ft for the non-metrically inclined, like me).

i say “unintentional” because if i were to guess about what africa animal we would cover our walls in it would be big cats. regardless, i’m feeling an increased affinity toward the big pachyderms, especially having seen one up close and personal. really really up close.

at the mweya peninsula - the main park section of queen elizabeth (qenp) - with drew and erin we saw plenty o’ elephants. walking across the road, trampling over trees, giving themselves dust baths…standard wild african elephant fare. having finally seen elephants, phil and i left mweya for ishasha - the southern, much less visited section of qenp - looking for tree-climbing lions (no trees, but saw a pride of 9 on the ground) and massive herds (known as families) of elephants. what we did find was a single bull elephant. the golden rule in big wildlife is “beware bachelor males.” probably an equally golden rule is “don’t get between mama and baby” and “don’t get between hippo and water” but back to our single bull elephant.

we found him in a more forested part of ishasha nosing (trunking?) around for food in the acacia trees. phil had his camera ready and started taking copious pictures like the good photographer that he is. i watched - the elephant, not the photographer. we were to the right of him and he was probably 20-30 yards away (i’m horrible at estimating distance and phil always accuses me of exaggerating for a good story - point is he was a close but reasonable distance from the car). at first he ambled along not taking too much notice of us in our car except to register that we were there and he’s a whole lot bigger than us, so whatever we are we’re nothing to worry about. his casual demeanor slowly dissapated, however, as phil decided for the sake of good pictures it’d be best to prevent the natural direction of his ambling, which would take him across our dirt path and up the small slope to our right, by cutting him off at the pass. imagine his irritation as each time he made to turn toward that beckoning slope he was stymied by a slowly creeping car that always seemed to be in his way. eventually enough was enough. the 20 yards quickly became 10 (a very close and no longer reasonable distance) as mr. elephant vented his anger with a bluff charge replete with fanned ears, trumpeting, and gigantic bone-crushing feet thundering at the ground. i was in the passenger seat, the side closest to the elephant - remember we drive on the other side of the road - and i have a healthy dose of my mortality, especially when confronted by two very large ivory tusks bearing down on me, so i screamed at phil, who was managing a large, expensive camera and lens while simultaneously trying to grab the steering wheel, to “drive, drive, drive!” obviously, we got away just fine. in reality our elephant didn’t take more than 3-4 steps towards us, enough to scare us and remind us to not mess with him, but not enough to do any damage. he didn’t barrel at us with no intentions of stopping, but that’s what it felt like sitting small and ill-equipped to battle it out with an elephant. i don’t know how much actual danger we were ever in - i’m sure the park rangers would tell us “not much” - but there’s nothing like seeing an angry elephant that close to remind you you aren’t the only one around.

part of the fun of game drives is the unpredictability and difficulty of finding the game. initially you want to be able to find the lions or zebra or impala right away. you’re in a national park and game reserve, they should be everywhere, right? wrong, and that’s the beauty of it. you’re not at a zoo, you’re in the wild. you have to go looking for them and who knows what you’ll see. we haven’t seen lions hunting or a leopard or a family of 100s of elephants or even a shoebill, but we did see a charging elephant. the others will come (maybe, hopefully) and when/if they do, they’ll be just that much more memorable because we had to be patient to see them, and because they aren’t confined in a zoo but out on the wide open expanses of african plains and acacia trees. classic africa.

our elephant-of-close-encounters is now part of the greater elephant motif in our house.  he’s immortalized as a photograph in a hand-carved wooden frame.