Elephant Charges

I remember a very old joke from the 1960s rash of silly “elephant” jokes.  Question: What do you do when an elephant charges you? Answer: Put it on your American Express card. Or “what did Tarzan say to Jane when he saw the elephants coming?” “Here come the elephants.”

I have been asked many times whether I have ever been charged by an elephant.  The answer is yes, three times. All three episodes took place in the Gona-re-Zhou Game Reserve in southeastern Zimbabwe during the seven months I spent there in 1968.

The first time wasn’t especially exciting.  I was in my Land Rover, driving on a two-rut road across a very flat and open area when I come up with three bull elephants off to my right.  They weren’t too close but were walking parallel to the road about 100 yards away.  Suddenly, and without any provocation one of the bulls turned and began to run toward me.  I waited until he was about 50 yards away and was ready to accelerate away, when he raised his trunk and skidded to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust. It was a “mock charge.” The bull trumpeted a few times, flapped his ears, kicked up some more dust, then lost interest, and turned to follow his two buddies. I was to learn later that a real serious charge could be recognized by an ears back, head down, full speed sprint towards the “threat,” which, in this instance, was me.  This fellow was just showing off.

The second charge was the scariest. As I have written before, the project I was working on involved rising very early and leaving camp by daylight.  We would carry out our 8 mile traverses and generally be done by the time it got really hot and return to camp by noon.  After a break for lunch, usually around 2:00 p.m., I would head out with my camp assistant Malvern Shumba to an area of the Mozambique countryside that we had not yet explored. I was using an old set of aerial photographs and some very outdated Mozambique maps to try and pinpoint target areas where the tsetse fly population would tend to be high. I was particularly looking for waterholes where elephant would always congregate. Because of the less than ideal conditions when the aerial photos had been taken, much of this area had been under cloud; so many waterholes had been obscured. During the many months I spent in this region of the country I was also compiling a record of the elephant I was seeing, mapping their locations, direction of movement and size and composition of their herds.

Malvern was a tall, lean young African man with a friendly demeanor and an urge to learn. He had a bright set of perfect, white, teeth when he smiled.  17 Years old when I met him, he had a 10^th grade education at a government school near the village where he had been born, close to the tiny rail siding and border post named Malvernia -  for which he had been given his Christian name.  He was particularly proud of his family name “shumba,” which means “lion.”  Malvern’s English was excellent and because he had been born near the Mozambique border he was very helpful in translating the local dialect. Malvern impressed me with his fluency in both written and spoken English.  When I would leave at the end of the month to return to Salisbury (now Harare) for five days, he would present me with a list of four or five books that he always “hoped” I could bring him. Many were school text books. Apart from being good company, he also was very skilled in finding his way back to the Land Rover when the day was cloudy and the sun wasn’t where it should have been in the sky.  On several occasions I know that, without Malvern Shumba along with me, I would still be wandering aimlessly through the Mozambique countryside while the sky overhead would be filled with vultures.

On one overcast and very windy afternoon we came across fresh elephant tracks (spoor) crossing the road.  We pulled off and began to follow them.  It seemed to be a small herd of 10 – 15 elephant, moving slowly through a stand of mopani trees and shrubs.  The thick, dark green, foliage made it hard to see more than a short distance of maybe 20 to 30 yards ahead of us. To make things worse, the brisk wind rustling the leaves made it difficult to detect any sounds of the big animals’ movements. As was my habit I carried a .375 magnum rifle strapped to my shoulder.  Up until now I had never had to use it in self defense. 

An elephant in thick Mopani shrub, Mozambique

After we had covered perhaps two miles Malvern saw the back of one of the elephants through the trees, so we were pretty close. The wind was in our faces and the ground was soft sand, so I rashly thought that the elephant had neither caught our scent nor heard us. Very unexpectedly we heard a crashing of branches and saw the top of an elephant coming at high speed directly towards us.  I forgot to mention that Malvern Shumba could really run.  I began to sprint after him as I caught a glimpse of the elephant’s head bobbing up and down as she charged.  As I ran I swung the rifle off of my shoulder and began to hope for an open space where I might have one clean shot at our pursuer or at least fire a shot into the air to scare her off.  Not too many seconds later (time really flies when you’re having fun) I slowed and turned to face her but she had stopped.  I can only think that she must have had a calf, as mother elephants will rarely distance themselves from their calves.  Her work done, she must have returned to her family group feeling somewhat proud of herself. Two very relieved but winded tsetse control employees returned to their vehicle with their tails between their legs.

The third incident was probably the most dangerous but also the most amusing, if you can look back on a scary situation and joke about it.  The top man in the Tsetse Control division had come to our border camp to have a look at progress and see the area first hand.  Desmond Lovemore was an exceptionally talented biologist and administrator and had earned his reputation through a dozen years of hard work and achievement.  He had arrived in his Land Rover station wagon to spend a few days “in the field.”  On his way through Chipinda Pools, the local Tsetse Control field headquarters, he had picked up the local man-in-charge, Jim Pasqual. Mr. Lovemore wanted to take a drive through an area to the south of our camp that we had not visited. On the map there were three rivers indicated, named respectively Number 1, Number 2 and Number 3 Rivers.  After breakfast five of us got into the Land Rover. Along for the ride was one of the South Africans working with us, Alex Kritzinger, me, my immediate boss, Alec Robertson, Jim Pasqual, and Desmond Lovemore. Thinking back now, it is amazing that I have recalled each of the names but I suspect it is partly a result of the unusual incident that we all shared for several minutes 53 years ago.

Road along the Rhodesia-Mozambique border, May 1968

We followed the border fence (Rhodesia/Mozambique) southwest from our camp for about 20 miles until we came to Number 1 River.  It was a river on the map but in reality it was a dry river course that would only hold water after heavy rains.  I was sitting in the back seat on the right side behind the driver.  Next to me was Alex Kritzinger and behind him in a little side seat right at the back was Jim Pasqual, the smallest of the group.  He was also the most easily prone to hysteria. (My personal assessment.)  We were driving slowly over smooth sandy ground following very faint vehicle tracks.  To our left we could see a sparse tree line, where the river would undoubtedly flow if, or when, it might rain. The trees were dry and leafless, as this was during August, mid way through the winter dry season. 

We were talking among ourselves and not paying too much attention to what seemed a pretty unexceptional and featureless landscape.  Quite suddenly we saw an elephant cow coming out of the trees to our left and heading directly toward us. It was all the more unexpected because it was the first elephant we had seen that day and usually females do not leave their herd groups. She was a fairly young cow, probably eight to ten years old.  She was running at full speed with her ears flattened against her sides and her head down. Mr. Lovemore accelerated and the cow tried to adjust to our movement as she came to a slight rise coming up out of the river bed.  The change in direction and the slight rise caused her to stumble and she went down to her knees in a cloud of dust directly behind us.  We all let out a collective sigh of relief, thinking that was the end of it.  But to our amazement, she clambered to her feet and came after us again. Before we fully realized it she was pulling up right behind the vehicle continuing her hot pursuit.  I looked back as she came to within a few feet of the back window of the station wagon, her head bobbing up and down at a furious rate. By now we must have reached at least 30 miles per hour and she seemed to be keeping up!

I turned quickly to look ahead and felt a sinking feeling when I saw a large dead tree had fallen across the track. From a distance the faint tracks in the sand seemed to go right under the tree.  I turned back to see the cow’s progress begin to slow, as she lost ground.  At the last minute, the tracks led us off to the right of the tree and we were able to cruise around the obstruction without losing speed.  All this time, Jim Pasqual, from his little seat in the back of the vehicle was repeating, hysterically, “he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming.”  As quickly as it had begun, the threat was gone.  For a long time afterwards we tried to speculate why a lone female elephant would have charged a moving vehicle, for such a great distance, and with such incredible persistence.  It may have been that she had been wounded by a poacher or that the sound of a car engine was associated with some traumatic event in her life.

All of the people that I was with that day were far more experienced in animal behavior, particularly elephant behavior, than I was at the time. I was fortunate that this wasn’t something that had happened to me on one of those frequent occasions when I was alone.   It would have been a tough story for anyone to believe. This episode reinforced the adage that animals in the wild can be, at times, completely unpredictable and that elephants really can move at speeds up to 25 mph (40km/hour)!