Elephants. Sometimes they are aggressive.

Well it's happened again. Nowhere near as bad as last time, but definitely enough to shake you up a little.

Yesterday, on a routine afternoon game drive heading eastward along a road called Lanner Drive I had another elephant encounter that I won’t forget in a hurry. Myself and 4 guests (2 Germans and 2 South Africans) were happily taking a slow cruise to Lanner Gorge, when at about 5pm three elephants (a cow and 2 calves) moved quickly across the road ahead of us. So I turned off the engine to watch. 'Oh look a breeding herd of elephants...'

Now the road we were on is very sandy with many twists and turns, and at this time of year is surrounded by pretty thick bush. Not the kind of area conducive to quick getaways. This info didn’t cross my mind at all until - out of the blue, a previously unseen deranged elephant comes charging straight out of the thick stuff towards the side of our landy from our right with no warning whatsoever! It was the kind of charge filled with serious intent, one you just had a feeling that it was no mock. My immediate reaction was to shout loudly and hit the side of my door repeatedly in an effort to stop the charge. Stop, it did not, but instead it changed course slightly heading to the back of the landy and proceeded to ram the rear of the vehicle a couple of times, and at one point actually lifted the 2 back wheels off the ground.

Madness.

Looking back I saw terror in the guests' eyes and fury in the elephant's (its head was close and seemingly intent on ramming the landy to pieces). I thought now its time to get outta heee. So I started the engine whilst being smashed from behind, and luckily the standard large puff of diesel smoke that a landy emits upon ignition seemed to deter the ellie from its attack and gave me enough time to get on down the road as fast as I could which was probably 25km/h considering the nature of the escape route........deep thick sand.

The ellie didn’t follow up its charge much to our relief, and we made our way further down the road, not stopping to look at the other elephants surrounding us on the way out. Once some distance was achieved, I checked that everyone was OK and uninjured physically - which they thankfully were. We then made our way to Lanner Gorge which was just another 1.5km or so down the track where we sat together and relived the experience. A timely heavy shower of rain definitely gave us a nice opportunity to chat and reflect on what had just happened.

Understandably everyone was a little shaken, but OK and happy with the way it turned out in the end. This is certainly not the first time that an ellie has pushed a vehicle on the concession - its probably the fourth time in the 6 months that we've been here (and the 2nd in two weeks), but definitely the first for me. I'm not really sure whether it was a bull or cow, but definitely did notice a temporal secretion which means that its was either a stressed/excited cow or a young bull in musth, but I suspect the former.

I'm starting to wonder whether these creatures have it in for me, or if it's just the presence of German guests that they don’t enjoy :) The only common denominator in both my traumatic ellie encounters.

Experiences like this get you thinking. One thing for sure is that we're starting to hear and experience more and more of these elephant incidents - which must be a sign of an elephant population that is simply too big for the area supporting it. Looking at it from another angle one could say that the space problem is ultimately a result of the root issue facing the earth today - there are simply too many people on the planet. If we want to conserve the bio-diversity of the earth we need to control our own population so that there can be space for nature to be nature. Unfortunately history shows that when it’s a matter of the struggle to survive (which it is for millions of people) - humans will do so at the expense of the natural world. The sad thing is that we wouldn’t really have to worry about controlling animal populations if we could control our own.