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

by Lawrence Anthony

They taught me that all life forms are important to each other in our common quest for happiness and survival. That there is more to life than just yourself, your own family, or your own kind.

After a few minutes of absolute stillness, I knew we had been set up.

I now knew for certain the izindunas who had been claiming my problems were internal – someone operating within the reserve – were spot on.

What about the poachers – would the promise of ivory bring even more of them out of the woodwork?

‘spook ’n diesel’ (cane spirit mixed with a smidgen of Coca-Cola)

that she had heard that the herd’s matriarch and her baby had been shot during the capture.

The last out was the fifteen-year-old, three-and-a-half-ton, teenage son of the previous matriarch. He walked a few yards and even in his groggy state realized there were humans behind. He swivelled his head and stared at us, then flared his ears and with a high-pitched trumpet of rage turned and charged, pulling up just short of slamming into the fence in front of us. He instinctively knew, even at his tender age, that he must protect the herd. I smiled with absolute admiration. His mother and baby sister had been shot before his eyes; he had been darted and confined in a trailer for eighteen hours; and here he was, just a teenager, defending his family. David immediately named him ‘Mnumzane’ (pronounced nom-zahn) which in Zulu means ‘Sir’.

Judging by their tracks, they had reached the eight-foot fence, milled around for a while and then backtracked into the reserve until – uncannily – they found the energizer that powers the fence. How they knew this small, nondescript machine hidden in a thicket half a mile away was the source of current baffled us. But somehow they did, trampling it like a tin can and then returning to the boundary, where the wires were now dead. They then shouldered the concrete-embedded poles out of the ground like matchsticks.

It’s known they emit stomach rumblings at frequencies far below human hearing that can be detected even when they’re many miles apart.

The next day she walked into the kitchen to order her staple diet of peanut-butter sandwiches. But this time her instructions were that our ranger David must deliver the meal to her room. The sandwiches were made to her specification: loaded with peanut butter and placed on a tray. As directed, David took the food and knocked on the door. It swung open and there in front of him was the psychic. She was stark naked. David put the tray down and muttered, ‘Your sandwiches, ma’am.’ Then he turned and fled, his face the colour of beetroot.

As Mandla’s knees folded, the vet broke a twig off a nearby guarri tree and placed it inside the end of Nana’s trunk to keep the airways open. He did the same to the other elephants, and then went back to Nana, squeezing ointment into her exposed pupil, pulling her huge ear over her eye to protect it from the blossoming sun.

The next day the wildlife dealer phoned, doubling his bid to $40,000 and repeating the offer of a tamer replacement herd. Again it sounded unreal, just too good to be true.

Then something happened between Nana and me, some infinitesimal spark of recognition, flaring for the briefest of moments.

Yet David had done it. Against infinitesimal odds, it seems he somehow missed touching all four of the prominent live wires in his frantic scramble for safety. How, we don’t know. And neither does he.

Fuck YA she did. Gawd dang.

It was heading in Françoise’s direction, so I rushed to get a broom to catch it. I have a strict rule that no snake is killed on Thula Thula unless the situation is life-threatening. If they’re in the house, we capture and put them back into the bush. I have learned that with a cobra, this is most easily done by slowly easing a broom towards it as it rears up and then gently pushing it along the floor and under the snake until it leans over on top of the bristle-head. It’s then lifted up, carried outside and allowed to slither off.

jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I rushed back with a broom but I was too late. Max had already cornered the reptile, now reared to almost a third of its length with its long thin hood flared, exposing a yellowpink underbelly scored with black bars. It was a compelling sight; loathsome yet stunning.

FUUUUUUUUCK

I love that he talks to her every morning, with the same tone and body language. They know how to interpret this … I believe.

The Land Rover’s two-way radio aerial also made a great scaffold for a one-inch bark spider that imperiously took up residence. Despite her diminutive size, she was an absolute dynamo. Every evening she strung out her web using the aerial as a support, and every morning she gobbled it all up, saving each precious milligram of protein snared in the gossamer threads, only to rebuild it again at dusk. We named her Wilma and her three-yard-wide web was an engineering marvel, an absolutely formidable, super-sticky trap that seized any flying insect in a grip of silky steel, including four-inch longhorn beetles, which she would methodically suck the life out of.

much like my own 4-legged

Nandi, Nana’s teenage daughter and mirror image, was much more independent and would often wander around exploring on her own. And then there was Mnumzane, the young bull and son of the previous matriarch who had been demoted from crown prince to pariah after his mother’s demise. He was no longer part of the herd’s inner circle and spent most of his time alone or on the periphery of the group. This was the eons-old elephant way; herds are fiercely feminized and once a male approaches puberty he is evicted. This is nature’s way of scattering its seed otherwise all herds would be interbred. But sadly the trauma of young males being ostracized from their families can be heart-wrenching; similar to desperately homesick boys being sent to distant boarding schools. Usually in the wild they meet up with other young evicted males and form loosely knit askari bachelor herds under the guidance of a wise old bull.

Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted one of the Ovambos come out from behind the house and nod at Ndonga. He was wiping his hands with a rag, which he quickly stuffed into his pocket when he saw me looking at him. Ndonga, who had been crouching near the car, stood up. ‘Well, I suppose you’re right, boss. Your Land Rover would have frightened it off anyway. Pity. It’s the first leopard I’ve seen on Thula.’

‘But now I am also hearing strange stories,’ Ngwenya continued. ‘And the strangest of all is that people are saying that Ndonga is the man who is doing the shooting. The man killing our animals.’ ‘What?’ The blood drained from my face. ‘What makes you say such a serious thing?’ Ngwenya shook his head, as if he too couldn’t believe it. ‘Ndonga shoots the buck, but the skinning is done by the other Ovambos and by Phineas, the gate guard. Then sometimes a truck with ice comes late at night with no lights and fetches it. Or sometimes Ndonga takes the meat to town.’

Any remaining niggles of doubt in my mind dissipated. It was suddenly as obvious as the sun beating down on us. The guards were indeed the poachers, just as Ngwenya had said. They were the ones who had been plaguing the reserve for the past year, decimating the buck population. The last thing they wanted was a herd of wild elephants on Thula Thula.

This also explained why the fence wires had initially been strung on the wrong side of the boma poles. And of course there was no leopard at the cottage earlier this morning. I would bet the farm that they had been butchering illegally slaughtered animals and my unexpected arrival had almost caught them red-handed – literally. Ndonga had to distract me while they hurriedly hid the evidence. That’s why the game guard had come out from the back of the house wiping off his hands: they had been covered with blood. And what about the tree that had been left standing right at the fence? That was probably the most obvious clue of all. It was far too coincidental not to have been deliberate. I had been set up. Totally fooled. However, not only had we been grotesquely betrayed, but – more importantly – the elephants were now in danger. ‘David,’ I said, pulling him aside. ‘I need to talk to you.’

I wrote down the details and immediately dialled the Elephant Managers and Owners Association in Johannesburg, asking for Marion Garai.

Then it rang; the ringtone piercing the wilderness like a whistle blast. The elephants stopped, and then almost in unison, moved over to the source of the alien noise. Frankie was there first, snaking her trunk over the piece of plastic, trying to figure out what it was. The others joined in and I watched this bizarre spectacle of seven elephants swinging their trunks over a chirruping cellphone in the middle of the bush. Finally Frankie decided she had had enough. She lifted her mighty foot above the phone and thudded it down. The ringing stopped.

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.

Nana ambled up to my window and stood towering above the Land Rover, dominating the skyline. Below her was her baby.

Incredibly she had brought her newborn to me. I held my breath as her trunk reached into the Land Rover and touched me on the chest; the sandpapery hide somehow as sensitive as silk, then it swivelled back, dropped and touched the little one, a pachyderm introduction. I sat still, stunned by the privilege she was bestowing on me.

Looking at the sea of faces before me in the room, hardy sons and daughters of the soil, I talked about the huge potential the Royal Zulu promised in improving their lives. I spoke of job opportunities, skills training, wealth creation, and education – all which would spring from the project. I appealed to them to all support the project, not only for themselves, but for the sake of their children – and, most importantly, for the sake of the earth, the mother of us all.

It wasn’t long before he had adopted an epileptic young warthog which he called Napoleon. The grandly named hog had been abandoned as an infant by his mother and we had found him wandering aimlessly on the reserve, lost and alone and easy prey for any passing leopard or hyena. The poor creature we found out later, sometimes had seizures, which is probably why it had been dumped by his mother. However, Napoleon soon regarded Brendan as his surrogate mother and even joined him in his bed at night. Max also took to Brendan immediately and tried to emulate Napoleon by slipping out of our room one night and getting into the new ranger’s bed.

Every wild thing is in tune with its surroundings, awake to its fate and in absolute harmony with the planet. Their attention is focused totally outwards. Humans, on the other hand, tend to focus introspectively on their own lives too often, brooding and magnifying problems that the animal kingdom would not waste a millisecond of energy upon. To most people, the magnificent order of the natural world where life and death actually mean something has become unrecognizable.

Most rural Zulus believe that spirits, in countless forms and guises, are very busily involved in the destiny of man, that they take form in the plant and animal kingdoms, and that the rivers, skies and mountains are inhabited by supernatural beings. They believe that after death there is no heavenly reward or hellish retribution, only a reassumption of the personality of an ancestor, from where one continues a never-ending role in the eternal symbiosis between the spiritual and material worlds. These deep-seated beliefs are poorly understood and too easily ridiculed by many Westerners who think they know best.

this makes me so so sad

Early the next morning a disconsolate Johnny told us she slipped away during the night while he was with her. Thula’s death affected everybody, particularly Françoise. I have never seen her sob so bitterly. We’ve had lots of animals living with us over the years and we were close to them all but with Thula it was different. Her cheerful disposition, her refusal to surrender until the last few days inspired everyone. She had shown us how life could be joyous despite pain; meaningful despite brevity. How life should be lived for the moment. The pall of sorrow she left behind was for many days impenetrable.

An hour later I was standing outside on the lawn looking over the reserve that I loved so much when I heard two distant shots. As the finality of it came crashing home I was seized by a terrible loneliness, both for my beautiful boy and for myself. After nine years of friendship I had failed. He had gone to join his mother whose violent death just before he came to Thula Thula he never really recovered from.