Entertained By An Elephant
Zimbabwe
July 2001
It’s dark by the time we get back to camp but everybody is
abuzz there is an elephant in our campsite. He’s been there for couple of hours
as evident by the amount of damage that is already done. He’s chewed off the
tops of many trees and lots of bushes are gone.
He roams oblivious of all of us and we creep behind him in
excitement. We remain completely quiet and exaggerated tiptoe motions. Every
once in a while he turned his head to the right and we charge away, getting out
of his view. Then he resumes his eating
and we resume our locale post.
Whenever he would relieve himself we scurried to get out of
the way of his massive projectile of fluid and fecal matter. We hoop and holler
with excitement but the hour is getting late and many of us want to go to
sleep. But we couldn’t rest knowing that this deadly animal is wanting around
in our campsite. At any moment, he could stampede and crush us to death,
Someone finds a camp guard who comes to our rescue. He has an annoying toy drum which he pounds
and pounds and pounds near the elephant ears. This really seems to irritate the
elephant as he moves away from the noise and eventually is ushered out of the park.
He meanders out of our sight and we laugh at ourselves for being so scared.
Now we notice a dozen or more warthogs are visiting us. Ugly,
noisy and quick, they don’t seem to rattle any of us after just spending the
evening with an elephant. We ignore the warthogs and zip ourselves inside our
tents and go to bed. The warthogs continue to roam the camp all night. In the
morning they take on the company of stray dogs and feral cats. But these wild
animals don’t bother us. Who cares about
them? After all, we hang with elephants.
To read more stories, check out: bkmemoirs.blogspot.com
or bkmemoirs.wordpress.com
To read more stories, check out: bkmemoirs.blogspot.com
or bkmemoirs.wordpress.com
