Too Close For Comfort

Elephants are responding to poaching and human wildlife conflict in unpredictable ways, and even an experienced guide can find themselves in trouble.

- Hollie M’gog

For some weeks, the elephants had been jittery – mock charges, weeping temporal glands, whole family herds on edge. In response, we fell back to a cautious viewing protocol, but still the elephants startled easily. This particular, fateful day started with two unexplained and unprovoked mock charges. Then, just 5km from our camp in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, we rounded a sandy blind corner to see a family group crossing only 30m in front of us.

Our approach unnerved them, but I immediately braked to a halt, switched off the engine and began to speak calmly to the elephants in front of us. With me were six students. The elephants resumed crossing after a slight agitated pause. We waited patiently for some minutes when suddenly a young bull of around 10 years old came thundering at me from my right side. I shouted loudly for him to stop and he drew up, dust about his heels, only a metre from my window.

I spoke calmly and firmly and he responded by moving away, then suddenly spun and came at us again. Once more I yelled and once more he stopped, ears flapping and trunk periscoped. He began to move diagonally in front of us, as if to cross the road. A small bush stood between the Land Rover bonnet and him. I continued to talk, leaning from the open window. As he reached the middle of the road he turned and came headlong at us shoving a tusk into the engine then withdrawing.

On the third collision, he collected the vehicle in his tusks and began to shove backwards. The front wheels were off the ground and the speedometer was registering 40kph!

Force of nature