by Whatever You Do, Don't Run- True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide (epub)
“Bale! Come and hold its head so I can unwind it.”
“Uh-uh. It’s poison,” he said, squatting so he was more comfortable while he watched the show.
“Bale, it’s a python. It’s not poisonous. They kill by strangling.” A process the python was starting on my arm. My fingers were turning red, but they held their grip, slippery as it was with slick snake shit.
“Uh-uh,” Bale said again. “Even if you touch them, they’re poison.” I didn’t have time to correct his English, let alone thousands of years of cultural beliefs, as my fingers were now purple. The python was drawing my two arms together so he could loop himself right over me, and I was losing the strength to fight him.
“Go get Anthony. Tell him I need help.”
“Okay,” Bale said, and began a slow amble along the path, whistling as he went.
“Bale!” He turned, and I thrust the snake toward him as if to throw it. “Run!”
He broke into a marathoner’s shuffle and disappeared around a bush.
I spent all of my energy keeping my two arms apart. I knew if the python linked them or got any more coils around, I would be severely bitten. Rationally I knew that it wouldn’t eat me, but the constant hissing and lunging made it seem as if it might try. A Cessna flew over low and waggled its wings, getting ready to land. I wondered if any of the incoming tourists had seen the strange sight on the ground and what they would think if they had. The snake hissed at the plane and redoubled its efforts to cut off the blood flow to my arm.
The fingers of my right hand had taken on an ominous silver-grey sheen and were losing their grip on the tail. I dropped to one knee, putting some of the python’s weight on the ground. It immediately gripped the earth with its scales and drew me closer to it. I tried to stand again, but I did not have the energy. I was in for one hell of a biting, I was sure. A python’s teeth lacerate and leave wounds prone to infection, and I would not have any energy to defend myself.
My strength failed.
Bugger, I thought, and let go of the tail.
A hand shot forward and grabbed it. It was Anthony’s. I hadn’t seen him coming.
“Good timing,” I said, grateful for his appearance.
“I would have been here sooner,” Anthony replied. “But Bale told me the wrong place.”
“Right,” I panted, and with a last bit of strength I helped Anthony throw the struggling snake into a waterhole, where it wouldn’t get hurt or be able to hurt us. It slithered out the opposite side and into the bush.
I could hear a Land Rover approaching the camp and knew it was filled with expectant tourists hoping to see magnificent wildlife and hear tales of derring-do.
“I better go and meet the guests,” I said, wanting some time to recover but knowing I had none.
“You might want to wash your hands before you shake any of the guests’ with them,” Anthony said. “They stink of snake shit.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. Then I had an idea. “But first I’m going to go and shake Bale’s.”
Encounters with Salvador
There is a specific madness that infects people who live in the bush. They ignore the rational fear that stops an ordinary individual from approaching dangerous animals. This fear diminishes when you live with these animals every day, and you start pushing the boundaries of safe behaviour to the breaking point. The very people who expressly forbid tourists from taking the slightest of risks, and get foamy at the mouth with anger when they do, are the same individuals you will find slithering up to large cats on their bellies or holding some of the world’s most dangerous snakes in their mouths as a party trick. It is inevitable that this leads to the occasional tragedy, and news is reported of the expert who wasn’t quite careful enough. The bush community shake their collective heads, say “Idiot,” and then see if they can pluck a hair from an elephant’s tail.
Personally, I am not one to take chances with lions, and I avoid buffalo when I can. Crocodiles terrify me, so I never play games with them. And after a few bites, I gave up on handling snakes. I do push the boundaries with my two favourite animals: cheetahs, which aren’t known to be dangerous, and elephants, which are.
I like to read an elephant’s mood, using body language as a guide, then see how close I can get. The best way to do this is to let them approach me, so I try to figure out which way they are likely to head and place myself in a concealed position where they’re about to start feeding. There is no sensation like being within touching distance of the largest land animal in the world, even from the relative safety of a vehicle. My breathing becomes wispy, every nerve is hypersensitive, and my heart races shallowly, as if it knows it must be quiet. Some elephants are never in the mood to tolerate proximity, and it’s necessary to keep a distance of many tens of yards or you can end up with considerable damage to your vehicle, your body and your tourists—and most likely your employer will be upset about at least two.
One elephant, though, is the most tolerant I have ever met, and as she is the leader of a herd, the whole family follows her example. The best experiences I have ever had with elephants have been encounters with Salvador and her herd.
Every year at some point, Salvador’s herd arrives at Mombo. It might be during the summer rains, or it might be in the winter when the flood was pushing in. She wasn’t living to any schedule, just moving with the food and appearing when it was best for her family to do so. Until I saw her, I had not been paying much attention to the identities of the elephants I saw at Mombo. The bulls that we saw, either by themselves or in small bachelor groups, were usually relaxed with the vehicles and allowed us to get very close. We always treated the herds of females with a little more trepidation, as any species that misinterprets your actions as a threat to its young is dangerous. And this species weighs thousands of pounds and can outrun an Olympic sprinter.
This herd was different. Driving toward them, it was obvious that they were unperturbed by vehicles. They were aware of my presence and that of the Land Rover that I sat in with my guests. Watching closely I could see their eyes turn toward us, then back to their food without hesitation. Occasionally one of the younger males would trot toward the vehicle, ears flared and trunk held high, challenging me to a fight. But this is typical of all little boys, and they try the same bullying tactics on buffalo, giraffes and even the occasional palm tree. The rest of the family would walk casually around the car, even brushing against it, rocking it on its springs as they did. On these occasions I rarely had to remind my guests that they should stay still and quiet.
With any herd I like to see if I can figure out who the matriarch is, and being so close to this group it was easy. Generally the old female in charge is in the lead when a herd crosses open ground, but disrespectful youngsters sometimes usurp the front position. My method for discerning the leader involved listening. Elephants communicate with one another in a complex language, most of which is at a frequency too deep for a human to hear. One phrase that is audible is a base rumble that sounds like the belly of a hungry giant. This verbal quake means “Let’s go.” When a group of ellies are feeding, you often hear the younger herd members saying this, obviously bored. “Come on, Mum, Auntie, can we go? Come on, let’s go!” The herd ignores the teens, but the moment the matriarch rumbles, the entire group moves at once, forming a line with the youngest at the back.
I identified the leader of this group as a female that I guessed to be somewhere in her forties. She was easy to note, as her tusks grew not forward but extravagantly outward and then up, curling around to each side like Salvador Dali’s moustache. I named her Salvador at first sight, irrespective of her gender.
The sweeping teeth that had given her her name protruded wider than her shoulders, but they offered no impediment to her except once when I saw the whole herd pass through two closely growing palm trees that she had to step around. Otherwise she used them to dig up roots, peel bark from trees and lazily rest her trunk upon, just as other elephants do.
; One August morning an unseasonable mist had risen from the diminishing floodwaters and obscured Salvador’s herd as I watched her feeding in the trees. I knew when the mist lifted, the light would be perfect for photography and every blade of grass would glisten with dew, sparking little rainbows in the lens. It was an opportunity too good to miss, so after brunch I grabbed two other staff members and my camera and raced back to where I had seen the remarkably relaxed herd.
I was an enthusiastic if untalented photographer and had recently seen some photos that I wished to mimic. They were of an elephant, taken with an expensive and long lens from a low angle, which created the effect of looking up, almost from the elephant’s feet. Since I lacked artistic vision, money and a big lens, I had to use the resources available to me and figure out a way to get extremely close to Salvador while she was so busy doing something that she wouldn’t think to tread on me. As the family left the copse they had been stripping for leaves and winter fruits, I saw my opportunity.
“Guys, if we drive into that channel, the herd will be right in front of us when they drink.” I already had the engine started.
“Are you sure you want to risk drowning another car?” Hayden asked. I had no idea how deep the channel was and was under threat of dismissal if another vehicle met a watery end while I was driving it.
I didn’t want to risk it, so I came up with another, considerably worse plan that the others wanted nothing to do with.
The channel that I believed the elephants were coming to drink from was not a particularly wide one. It ran deep for only about six feet across, but spilled into the floodplain over a width of about 120 yards. This area was dotted with flowers of pink, white and yellow and dappled with green shoots of aquatic grasses. The deeper water was a dark and menacing blue, and I planned on not getting close enough to it to let a crocodile grab me and pull me into its depths.
As Ella and Hayden sat sensibly in the Land Rover, I stripped down to shorts and waded into the water. It was considerably chillier than I had imagined. Around the ankles it was merely unpleasant, but as I slipped into the occasional divot made by crossing animals, it would splash higher. As it hit my crotch, I gave out a long gasping word “ohmysweetlittlechilliesthatiscold!”
The herd, which had been confidently approaching the channel up until now, heard my exhalation. Some of the leading members paused, raising their trunks to sniff the air. One by one behind them, the younger elephants copied their elders, until the babies at the back also wavered their uncoordinated noses in the air. I sank low into the water, pushing myself firmly into the mud beneath it, holding only my camera above the surface. Salvador strode boldly forward, her ears flared. An elephant’s eyesight is not the best, but she would have made out the vehicle on the bank opposite her. And if she had looked closer, she would have made out the unusual sight of a human trying to burrow into mud not far from her feet.
I pulled my head from the mud just in time to see Salvador’s posture relax and her trunk droop onto one of her wayward tusks. She hadn’t seen me. She walked forward again, and as her feet hit the water she started gripping flowers with her trunk, dragging their tendrils into her mouth and chomping contentedly.
She reached the deeper water at a point opposite me on the channel, and I started shivering with a mixture of cold and excitement. I’d been close to elephants on foot before and always marvelled at how significantly more gigantic they appeared when away from the safety of a vehicle. Now, with Salvador and her sweeping tusks looming over my prone form, fear won over my enthusiasm. I started to think that I should have listened to Hayden and Ella.
Salvador started to drink—great slurps with her trunk first, then a slosh as she cocked her head back and released a gushing torrent into her mouth. The occasional splash landed on me, and in a moment of scientific inquiry, I wondered how much bacteria might be up an elephant’s nose.
I took some photos with my quaking hands, mainly close-ups of Salvador’s broad and flawed face as she drank but also wider shots of the whole herd as they fanned out on either side of her and gurgled at the channel.
Although I was close enough to smell their breath, I hadn’t been detected. I started to feel pretty happy with myself, as it appeared my gamble had paid off. I was sure that I was getting some great photographs, and nothing bad had happened as the two back in the car had warned it would. I looked back at them and gave a cheeky wink, which they later said looked like I was trying to get mud out of my eyelashes. Then Salvador took a step forward.
Her tree-trunk legs plunged into the deep water, which was head deep for me but barely reached her bosom. The seismic strides sent small tsunamis that sloshed over me, chilling me to the bone and rinsing off some of the mud. She was far more stoic about the cold than I had been, but what distressed me most was that she apparently was going to cross. The herd would follow, and fifty or so individual elephants, amounting to more than two hundred legs, would soon be stomping and squelching through the place where I was lying. No matter how relaxed this herd might be, they were still wild elephants, and if I stood, the adults would react to the sudden threat and trample me, stabbing into me with their tusks for good measure. If I stayed put, I would almost certainly get trod upon and drown in the mud. Neither was appealing to me, and when Salvador gave the rumble that meant “Let’s go,” I knew I had to act. I slithered as inconspicuously as I could toward the elephants—and the deeper water.
My new plan was to stay underwater, swimming between the legs of the ellies if need be, holding my camera safe and dry above the surface like a parody of the Loch Ness monster.
As for my great fear, crocodiles, I comforted myself with the thought that the multiton animals plowing up the water would drive them away. I plunged under, my left wrist held high and the fingers of my right hand crossed, as I knew my crocodile theory was optimistic at best. A massive leg stood solidly in front of me, remarkably clear in the tannin-stained water. I snuck my face above the surface, took a breath, took a photo, and went back under. I popped up again and again and eventually realised that the elephants must know that I was there.
This revelation, and the corollary that they thought I was harmless and so wouldn’t hurt me, gave me a surge of confidence. I wanted to swim openly among them as I once had with tame elephants in Asia. Then I thought of the trust they had placed in me—how lucky I had been—and took my last photos quietly. Then I slipped downstream so as not to bother them anymore.
I didn’t see them again that day, and soon after, BK said he had seen them travelling south, out of the Mombo area. Salvador would lead them where they needed to go, and I couldn’t wait until she brought them back.
Other elephant herds came and went in the months that followed, but they had a wary wildness to them, easy to see in the way they held themselves as I approached. I could not get as close and would never have tried swimming with them or attempted what I did the next time Salvador and her family came to Mombo.
I found the group ambling along and felt a surge of fondness for them, which doubled when I saw that Salvador’s daughter (easily recognised as she had inherited her mother’s buck teeth) had had an addition since she had last been with us. The little chap was already walking confidently but still had little control over the many thousands of muscles in his trunk. It swung like a rubber hose under too much pressure, on occasion so violently that it would startle him and send him scurrying to his mother for protection.
Like every other guide or wildlife lover who is eventually eaten or trampled, I felt that I had a bond with this herd that would make me safe with them. I wanted to try my luck again. So I forewent the sacred nap that I usually had between morning and afternoon drives and went straight back to find them as soon as I had no tourists to look after. They were island hopping, moving between the clusters of vegetation that grow in perfect circles throughout the Okavango. These vegetated patches were not true islands in that they were surrounded by grass, not water, and their centres were often barren, white
earth with only the occasional scrubby palm as a sign of life. It was in one of these low trees that I insinuated myself, in the dead centre of an island that the herd seemed most likely to visit next.
My vehicle was parked about sixty feet away, but soon offered no escape route as the elephants entered the island and started energetically eating everything they could—tearing off branches, uprooting grass and delicately tapping it against their heel to remove the dirt, and shaking palm trees to make their hard nuts fall. These tennis ball–size nuts are popped whole into the mouth, rolled like a Gobstopper, then with a resounding crack popped open by molars the size of a baby’s head. The air was filled with sounds like rifle pops and grinding machines, with the occasional trumpet from a young one as it darted between an adult’s legs or played chase with a cousin.
The palm cluster that sheltered me was too small to bear fruit, and the leaves held no nutrition, so the elephants didn’t bother with it. On occasion they would brush by, and I would hold my breath at their enormity, their potential for violence and their present restraint. I felt awe, respect and something else. What I had felt before was like a crush on a pretty girl in a magazine, distant and intangible. The close contact they had allowed me had made this bloom into a type of love—that most unpredictable and dangerous of sentiments.
Then Salvador’s grandson walked by, his trunk whipping around like an epileptic snake, and he almost ruined the party. On an errant swing, his little member pushed aside the frond that was my main concealment and left me exposed to the herd.
The baby stood facing me, and I saw the first little buds of its tusks, the points squirting sideways. “Hey little guy,” I mouthed, not daring to speak. “Don’t tell your mum I’m here, okay?”
