The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild

by Lawrence Anthony

  However, it wasn’t just the elephants that were adjusting. With the removal of the Ovambo guards, scores of other animals suddenly appeared on the landscape, as if by magic. Wherever I went I saw kudu, nyala, herds of wildebeest and impala and a host of smaller game scurrying about seemingly without a care in the world. Previously hunters had taken a shot at any creature that moved, and then the poachers had muscled in, blinding antelope with megawatt spotlights and shooting indiscriminately from vehicles both at night and during the day. No wonder the animals had been so skittish whenever a Land Rover drove past. Until now the only time I had really had occasion to appreciate the wildlife on Thula Thula was when David and I were camping outside the boma. A car engine would set the entire reserve in panic mode – with good reason, as I now realized.

  No longer. Almost overnight, a radical transformation had occurred. Hyena became more brazen in the evenings and we even got occasional glimpses of leopard, lynx and serval, the beautiful tawny black-spotted cats of the night, whose pelts are unfortunately still highly prized. The more the creatures lost their fear, the more of them we encountered and with mounting jubilation I discovered that despite mass poaching, we still had healthy populations of almost all of Zululand’s indigenous animals thriving on our doorstep. The whole reserve was now truly energized, and us with it.

  I found this totally astonishing. How could the simple removal of the guards have such an instant effect on the game? How could they know they were now safe; that the major poaching threat had been removed? Obviously this would not be regarded as evidence in a court of law, but to me, in the natural order of things, it was proof that the animals themselves now knew it was over.

  Years later I was in the Sudan on a conservation project when I heard an incredible story on good authority that sounded similar to my own. During the twenty-year war between northern and southern Sudan elephants were being slaughtered both for ivory and meat and so large numbers migrated to Kenya for safety. Within days of the final ceasefire being signed, the elephants left their adopted residence en masse and trekked the hundreds of miles back home to Sudan. How they knew that their home range was now safe is just another indication of the incredible abilities of these amazing creatures.

  Immersed in the bush each day with no pressing problems reignited another of my loves; birdwatching. With its diverse habitats Thula Thula has over 350 identified species of bird and is an absolute haven for ‘twitchers’, those unusual people obsessed with spending every free moment watching birds.

  On one glorious Zululand morning David and I were following the herd on foot through thick riverine bush, our footsteps on the leaf litter the only sound, when we came across a troop of monkeys grouped on top of a tall, flat acacia robusta. They were chattering and screaming insults at a magnificent martial eagle circling just low enough to demand their attention, but high enough for them to show some bravado.

  Or so they thought. Emboldened by the distance, the little creatures with their animated black faces were recklessly exposing themselves at the edge of branches instead of hiding within the foliage.

  As we watched, another martial appeared, coming in low and fast on huge silent wings. Flying barely ten feet off the ground and skirting tree trunks with deft twists and turns, her fiercely hooked beak and snowy undercarriage were just a blur as she glided under the tree canopy, hidden from the raucous monkeys. With a wingspan of more than seven feet, a martial in flight is always a stunning sight. But up as close as this it was pure wizardry – as she came over us we could feel the wind from her wings.

  With an imperceptible twitch of her tail feathers she suddenly pulled into an almost vertical climb heading straight up for the troop like a Stealth jetfighter. Before the monkeys could even guess what was happening she had plucked one off a branch, and was soaring through the sky to meet her mate with the still squirming primate hooked in her gnarled talons.

  The tawny eagle is also a masterful predator and, often hunting in tandem like the martials, it is a particular threat to newborn fawns in the breeding season. One day, Nana and the herd were browsing off on our left when for some reason I glanced skywards and picked out two of these majestic raptors, just specks in the azure sky, swooping vertically in perfect synchrony and eventually blasting into the tree canopy at impossible speed. They are going much too fast, I thought, as they plummeted through the tangled green foliage – they can’t possibly stop in time.

  But a tawny can plummet down from the sky, strike its prey, and then land in the space of just a few yards. As we rounded the corner we found them both with their claws sunk into a nyala fawn, flapping their giant wings in unison as they coordinated their take-off to lift the deadweight. The impact of the high-velocity attack had instantly killed the fawn, but the mother was determined to fight back with all her worth. She grabbed her baby’s foot in her mouth and with legs locked stiff as metal shafts, she anchored herself in an awful tug-of-war to prevent the birds from flying off. The eagles, startled by our sudden appearance, dropped their booty and glided back into the heavens.

  No matter how heart-wrenching the situation, we never interfered with nature. Brutal as the food chain is, that’s the balance of life in the wild. Terrible as the tragedy was for the nyala mother, the eagles also had to feed their young.

  But it’s not all blood and gore; there are also the brilliant colours and exquisite song in Zululand birds. Plum-coloured starlings, turquoise European rollers that winter with us, the gorgeous bush-shrike, blood-red narina trojans and countless others boasting plumages so flamboyant, the visual feast was unbelievable. Catching sight of a gwala gwala in flight, the only time it flashes its vivid scarlet wing feathers, can send the soul soaring.

  It did mine. Poaching, elephant charges … well, that was all yesterday, I thought happily.

  I didn’t know how wrong I was.

  chapter fourteen

  One morning Françoise joined me on the quad bike, a four-wheeled all-terrain motorbike, while I tracked the herd.

  As we zoomed off on a dusty track, I marvelled at the profound transformation she had made in adapting to a life in the bush. Unlike me, her sophisticated upbringing in the buzzing metropolis and boulevard cafes of Paris were light years removed from the African outbacks of my youth.

  A good illustration of this was the first time she held a banquet at Thula Thula for some Parisian friends and laid a table out on the front lawn. It was groaning with Camembert and Brie cheese, exotic fruit, freshly baked rolls, salamis, pâtés and decorated in the most splendid wreaths of scarlet, white and mauve bougainvillea you could imagine.

  That I considered these, her favourite flowers, to be rampant alien invaders cut no ice with her at all. ‘Zey are exotic and beautiful, and must be protected,’ she had instructed Biyela the gardener. Biyela having fastidiously verified the translation with Ngwenya, thereafter defended the colourful bushes with typical Zulu tenacity, threatening me with whatever garden implement he was carrying whenever I appeared too close.

  She was still laying out the table helped by a friend when a passing troop of monkeys swooped from the trees. Instead of merely chasing the mischievous animals away, Françoise and her companion fled into the house and resorted to shouting Gallic insults from behind a large plate-glass window.

  Undeterred by the colourful language and unable to believe their luck, the troop settled in and leisurely devoured the best French cuisine in Zululand. Fortunately they didn’t have a taste for champagne, or else a few magnums of the good stuff would have gone down their gullets as well.

  By the time Ngwenya and I had shooed them away it was too late. The monkeys had scattered into the trees grasping hunks of squelchy cheese and handfuls of pâté – not to mention every morsel of fruit and bread that had been laid out. The fact that I was almost paralysed with laughter didn’t help the situation much either.

  But that was more than a year ago. Now she was much more comfortable in the bush and with her arms tight around my waist we rod
e through as shallow section of the Nseleni River to a high lookout point to see if we could find the elephants.

  The hill had a panoramic view and we spotted them briefly in thick bush bordering the river below, close to where we had just come through. We must have missed them by fifty yards or so and it worried me that I hadn’t detected them – especially with Françoise riding pillion. I couldn’t shake that niggling unease as normally I’m able to sense when the elephants are around.

  ‘There they are again,’ I pointed, and we watched as the elephants loped into view about a mile away, moving in single file across the deep-green flood plain disappearing back into the riverbed.

  ‘They’re moving off. Let’s give them a bit of time to cross the river and go after them.’

  About ten minutes later we rode back down the hill onto the flood plain and I slowly eased the bike down the cutting into the lazily flowing river, driving through with feet held high to avoid a drenching. Once on the other side, I gunned the motor to scramble up the steep incline and we shot to the top of the riverbank.

  Absolute disaster! I suddenly became aware of huge grey shapes morphing all around us. Incredibly we had ridden bang into the middle of the herd! The elephants had stopped to graze right at the exit of the river crossing – something I had not anticipated as I had thought they were on the move.

  Shock shuddered through my body. I suddenly felt minuscule, puny, unprotected on a tiny bike surrounded by edgy five-ton mammals. And even worse, I had Françoise with me. My throat tightened as my mind raced; how do I get out of this? With a river and steep bank behind and a herd of agitated elephants in front, the options were limited.

  What was even more disconcerting was that we had also cut off Marula and Mabula, who were slightly behind us, from their mother Frankie. They panicked and started squealing loudly. And if there was one single thing that could aggravate our already dire predicament even more, it was getting between an aggressive female elephant and her frightened young.

  We were in trouble. Deep trouble.

  Nana who was a few yards away on our right took two menacing steps forward with her trunk held high, and then thankfully stopped and backed off. That was terrifying enough on its own, but the real problem was coming from behind her: Frankie.

  I frantically tried to turn the bike and make a bolt for it, but the riverbank was too steep, the bike’s turning circle too wide. We were hopelessly trapped.

  Trying to sound as unconcerned as possible, I said to Françoise, surprised that my voice was still steady, ‘I think we have a problem.’ I was absolutely horrified that I had placed her in such mortal danger.

  By now Frankie was furiously reversing out of a thicket, trying to swivel and charge us. I drew my 9-mm pistol and handed it to Françoise to protect herself if anything happened to me. Basically, it was a peashooter as far as an elephant was concerned, but as a last resort, a shot may distract Frankie.

  I then stood up on the bike to face Frankie who was now coming directly at us – fast, furious and deadly. Clive Walker, the famous African game ranger, describes the experience superbly in his book Signs of the Wild. ‘An elephant charge is accompanied by the sound of screaming demons. Except perhaps for the prospect of imminent hanging, there is nothing that serves to concentrate the mind more wonderfully.’

  That summed it up exactly. On Frankie thundered. I pleaded for this to be a mock charge, desperately looking for signs that she just wanted to scare us away from her young. The key indication of this was if her ears flapped out. But no – with mounting horror I watched her fold her ears back and roll up her trunk to take full impact when she hit. A rolled trunk meant she was going all the way. This was for real, and with that awful realization my sensations heightened surreally, like in a slow-motion car crash. I heard someone hammering in the far-off village as if it was next door, while high above me I watched an eagle soaring and marvelled at its graceful flight, as if I had nothing better to do. I had never seen a sky so blue.

  On she hurtled, her huge frame blotting out all else. Lifting my hands as high above my head as I could I started yelling at her, then began screaming at the monstrous sight in a last-ditch attempt to pierce her mist of rage.

  Then just as I thought we were goners, her ears suddenly cracked out and she broke off and unrolled her trunk. But the massive momentum hurled her right up to the bike where she towered directly above us, glaring angrily through tiny eyes. I involuntarily sat down on the bike and looked up at the crinkled underside of Frankie’s throat in petrified wonder. She shook her huge head in frustration, showering us in the thick red dust from a recent sand bath and then backed off a few paces.

  Marula and Mabula scampered past her. After making another two or three terrifyingly threatening gestures at us Frankie turned and followed her son and daughter into the bush, away from us.

  I eased stiffly down off the saddle and turned to Françoise. Her eyes were tightly closed and I gently whispered that it was over. It was OK. The two of us sat still, too stunned to do or say anything.

  Eventually I found the energy to start the bike and pulled off in the opposite direction to the herd. We drove through the bush which seemed so still after the charge, as if the birds and trees themselves knew what had happened.

  Eventually we saw a truck carrying some visiting friends, waved them down and got off the quad bike. As they came across, Françoise started vividly describing what had just happened, gesticulating energetically. The only problem was she still had the cocked 9-mm pistol in her hand, finger on the trigger and each time she emphasized some dramatic point she waved the gun around. Our friends scattered for cover until I managed to retrieve the gun and cleared the breech.

  Back home I told the astonished staff what had happened. ‘I can’t believe you’re still alive,’ said David, whistling through his teeth. ‘She must have made a conscious decision not to kill you. Why do you think she did that?’

  A good question. Elephants rarely break off once they’re at full steam and I still couldn’t believe that Frankie had actually halted at the last minute. Why had she changed gears, dropping down from a lethal real attack to a mock charge? It was virtually unheard of.

  The next day I got on the bike and drove back to the river crossing where we had so nearly lost our lives to try to figure it out. I needed some answers. But try as I might, the crucial moments of the charge were a total blank, as if my mind couldn’t grapple with the horror.

  So I retraced our route, driving through the same river crossing several times, mentally scrolling over the incident again and again. Slowly the details started fleshing out. I remembered I had been standing on the bike and screaming as she charged. But what was I yelling? My mind was still a void.

  Then in an instant it came flooding back. I was screaming, ‘Stop, stop, it’s me, it’s me!’

  That was all. In retrospect it sounds rather ludicrous, but that’s exactly what happened. To shout ‘It’s me’ at a charging elephant, the most aggressive female in a herd protecting her panicked babies is about as lame as it gets. Yet it stopped her, and I knew then that she had somehow recognized me from the boma. I still believe she had spared our lives because she had witnessed her matriarch’s interaction with me the day before I let them out.

  chapter fifteen

  ‘The power’s down again,’ said David with a grimace, ‘this time on the western boundary.’

  We were having endless problems with the fence. Our electrified border was temperamental and unreliable, given to more mood swings and irrational behaviour than a menopausal rhino. Everything affected it. Too much rain drowned the current. Too little rain affected conductivity. Lightning struck it with regular monotony, sparking out the voltage. Hyena, bushpig and warthog constantly dug holes beneath it, shorting the circuit. These were just some of the obvious problems; sometimes I swear it went down just because it damn well felt like it. It certainly didn’t make our task of keeping a herd of angry elephants – one of which had just charge
d me – inside the reserve any easier.

  We had also just discovered that both Nana and Frankie had been impregnated by the dominant bull sometime before leaving the previous reserve. As elephants have such bulk, it’s often difficult to tell early on when they are carrying, but it had by now become obvious that our two adult females were gestating.

  Consequently, rule number one on the reserve was that the power always had to be on or we risked losing the elephant. Not that they were trying to escape any more, but all it took was for Nana to be walking near the boundary and sense that there was no power – and who knows what would happen? That meant there were mandatory dawn and dusk inspections along the entire twenty-mile perimeter, and often others during the day as well. We never went to bed with the fence not fully operational.

  The problem this time was not only that the power was down, the Land Rover also wouldn’t start and it was getting dark.

  ‘No problem,’ said David. ‘I’ll take the tractor.’

  I looked across at Gunda Gunda, the onomatopoeic Zulu name for our faithful twenty-year-old beast. She was reliable all right and would do the job but she had no headlights and a twenty-mile bush drive in the dark without night vision can be a hairy ordeal.

  The African wilderness is merciless and to survive you need every genetic advantage you can muster. Consequently almost all animals have excellent night vision enhanced by a reflective membrane behind the iris, which catches even distant starlight and magnifies it. This membrane is why their eyes reflect so brightly in the dark when a light is shined at them. The big cats apparently have the best night vision but all species rely on acute eyesight either to hunt or to escape the predators of the night.

  Well, not all species. There’s a notable exception; the planet’s most dominant creature is completely night blind. And that’s us – Homo sapiens.