Elephants, gentle giants

Elephants are one of the ”Big Five” and are beautiful creatures. The females and young live in herds, while the males wander around alone or in small groups. The giant animals can move through the bush without making a sound. It regularly happens that suddenly an elephant appears at our waterhole. Only when he starts eating or drinking, you hear him and all of a sudden see him standing there. At the lodge we had some adventures
with elephants already. At one bushwalk we found an elephant in musht. This is a condition in which the males make a lot of testosterone and become very irritable. We hid behind a bush and retreated carefully to a safe distance. Another time there stood an elephant in front of our gate when I wanted to take Niels to school. We had to wait until he walked away a little before we could safely open the gate. Once I came too late for an appointment because a bull elephant stood on the Marula road who found it a nice game to walk towards our car every time we drove a little back. Only after 20 minutes he had enough of the game and walked off into the bush and we could go on, most of the time the elephants here are very relaxed though. Once I stood on our bridge to watch a big bull, which had a nap about ten metres away from me in the dry riverbed.

Regards from the bush,
Miriam