African elephant encounters

The morning had been filled with wildlife – Etosha National Park was certainly living up to its reputation. We’d seen herds of zebra, hordes of springbok, countless oryx/gemsbok, wildebeest, and some of the less common antelope – steenbok, impala, hartebeest, dik-dik. We saw a male kudu with two full twists to its horns send mud flying into the air, probably trying to reduce its insect issues at a small pothole. The birds had also raised our admiration: iridescent blue and violet rollers, stately bustards, a pale chanting goshawk with unbelievably orange legs and beak. Nevertheless, my dad commented, “I’m ready to see an elephant.”

So, when some of the dark shapes that we spotted across a broad grassy/dusty plain looked like they had ears and trunks, we all got pretty excited. Looking at the map, we could guess that our paths might intersect.

Indeed, a few km down the road, after a deliberate right turn, we saw a large elephant ahead of us on the road. (Okay, “large” is an adjective that doesn’t really need to be associated with elephant – it sort of goes without saying.) Alan said, “I’ll just shut off the Kombi here and we’ll watch it.” Well, an elephant has a slow walking cadence, but it covers a lot of distance fast. In just a short time, we could begin picking out the details – missing most of both tusks, a hole in the top of the left ear, slightly incontinent dribbling pee as it walked. The zebras in the foreground hustled out of the way. And still the elephant strided towards us down the road. Every so often, it snuffled its trunk on the ground, picking up dust and blowing it onto its sides or underneath, bothered by bugs. Apparently it wasn’t aware of Namibian traffic laws, as it was on our side of the road. The footsteps of an elephant crunch sonorously on gravel, measured and inexorable. About 20 feet in front of us, it stopped. We had long since started to get a little nervous. My mom rolled up the window on the passenger side. The elephant waved its ears a little, but perhaps not as much as I had been led to believe signaled threat. Then it shifted its position to pass us on our right – no one moved except to close the windows on that side as well. It stopped even with Alan in the driver’s seat, its eye level above the roof rack. Some time recently I had paged through the mammal field guide and exclaimed about the weight of a large bull. Alan had done a back-of-the-envelope calculation that it was 17 times more massive than the Kombi! I remembered that now. I also began wondering how I could best protect Katie, who was unusually quiet in my lap, in the event of a roll-over: no one had their seatbelts on. I had the impression of an enormous curtain of deep grey wrinkles right outside the window. It wound its trunk around and fanned its ears. Then it continued on. Whew! We let out a collective sigh of relief and giggled a little. But the adrenalin rush wasn’t over yet: I looked around behind to find that the elephant had turned and stopped, facing the Kombi directly behind us. Again, we waited, barely daring to breathe. Was it looking at us with irritation or perplexity? Had we posed a challenge, parked in its way, or was it simply trying to figure out the dimensions of this large new rock? It reached out its trunk and touched the back of the vehicle, then turned and walked away.

When we checked later, we found dried dust mixed with nose snot, in a 6-inch line on the back window.

Other notable events of the day: 4 other dusty elephants, taking a well-worn path through the savannah; 2 lions by the road, including a young male who climbed out of the culvert to pee right in front of us; jackals in camp, waiting for something to happen at the waterholes, in yipping choruses of high wails all around; lightning to the north the night we stayed at Numatomi, and more unseasonable rain; surprising diversity of vegetation types, from grassland to thick thorn to almost aspen-like copses of small trees; Etosha pan simply full of water, appearing as vast as the ocean in a 180 degree arc from some viewpoints.

Our 2nd elephant encounter occurred when a tuskless male (but not the one near our Kombi – different distinguishing marks!) visited the Okaukuejo waterhole one evening when we were there. He spent a lot of time fanning himself with his ears and standing with his bottom facing the crowd!

Our 3rd elephant encounter was en route from Palmwag to Brandberg: Desert elephants!!! 8 on one side of the road, uprooting bushes and making low rumbling sounds; 4 on the other side, who eventually ran down a gully and across, trumpeting at the other group. There were elephants of all sizes- but, of course, all very large!