Kruger
National Park. South Africa. We are on safari. We cross one of Kruger’s massive
rivers, and over the steep bank we notice two elephants. Females. We look
closer and there is a tiny elephant, laying on her side between one of the
female’s legs, her mother. She is not moving. You can see the fuzz on her tiny
grey body. The mother is digging sand around her and kicking it onto her. I
hold my breath; brows furrowed and pray she is not dead. The mother nudges her
with her foot, getting her enormous toes underneath the baby’s body and tries
to prod her up. Her limp body just moves with her mother’s foot, flimsy, not showing any
sign of life. After much nudging, and spraying of sand, finally, the baby flaps
her ears. A soft pink color on the inside of the ear is revealed. She is
alive. I am elated.
Over the next twenty minutes we watch as the mother helps
the baby to her feet. Watching a young elephant discover how to walk and use
her trunk is amazing. The trunk is like a slinky on the end of her face and she
swings it in the air and swirls it around like a toy. You imagine she is
thinking, hey, what is this thing, this is fun. The baby watches her mother use her
trunk to rip off leaves to eat, and she energetically swings her trunk into the air and tries to do
the same. She wobbles on her feet and runs around, delighted with her new feet, legs, trunk, life.
Another
sighting.
Over 60
elephants are gathered in the river bank. They are cooling themselves drinking
the water and spraying themselves with cool sand. The group is all ages and it’s an amazing
assortment of sizes. The matriarch, an enormous female starts walking down
stream. The terrain is steep, rocky and variable. All of the
elephants follow, single file. They navigate the rocks, steep slopes and stay in line.
There is an area of sand that slopes down. The first elephant approaches the top, looks down, and then gets on her back
knees and slides down, literally. These 3 ton animals are sand sledding. It was
incredible to watch and one could almost imagine a “yee-haw” coming out of their
mouths. The mouth of an elephant naturally slants up, so its easy to imagine a smile. We sat in awe watching these enormous elephants at the top of the hill, bending to get on their back knees and then letting it rip down the hill.Well, you can only 'rip' so fast being so large, but in the grand scheme of things, it was ripping.
One of the
baby elephants followed suit, and rather than sledding down nicely like the
others, the steepness forced her into somersaults. The baby elephant rolled
down, spiraling like a tire going down a hill, and at the bottom landed on her
back with her legs flailing up in the air. One of the elephants saw this, trumpeted, and
immediately, over six elephants were running over to help her. Literally. They
surrounded the baby, nudged her over and up on her feet and the baby wobbled off
in-line with the others. An amazing glimpse into the complex familial systems of elephants.
