Uncanny Elephants by Graham Bowles

There are many things that amaze me about elephants, their size and strength mixed with such grace and their ability to understand things with no obvious clue (to me) as to how, other than intuition. So when Mafunyane and Thando both appear next to camp within a day of each other it blew me away, but then I thought they are elephants, they knew when to pitch up and who would be there.

Mafunyane with his distinctive ear and collar

To give you a little background, both Mafunyane and Thando tend to spend most of their time ‘out’ of camp and by that I mean in the least accessible areas to us. This makes collaring them particularly challenging. When his collar was due for renewal, Mafunyane decided to play hide and seek with us to the south in some of the most dense mopane forests we have in the are and Thando, on the whole, stays up north in the neighboring concession. However, having spent most of the year in their respective stomping grounds they now appear, together, right next to camp.

It was these thoughts that were going through my mind as we sat a few hundred meters away from Thando ready to collar him. Thando was, quite wisely, sitting under the shade of a tree. We, less wisely, were in the open on the road awaiting the arrival of the chopper that was bringing Rob-the-vet who was restocking his darts after one already successful re-collaring of Mafunyane early that morning.

It was not long until they arrived and surveyed the territory from the air. Using the chopper, they managed to separate him from the rest of the herd and move him back towards dry land. They darted him and then pulled back waiting for the drugs to take effect.

Now that all sounds very straight forward but in actual fact there is a lot of factors to this equation: the right amount of drugs for the size of the animal, the right pressure to see the dart home, which is of course dependant on getting to your desired distance, too far and the dart will not deploy the drugs or miss altogether, too close and you’ll injure the animal.

Thando has his collar changed

Thankfully this darting went well, although the dart had hit some fiberous tissue which meant it took a long time for the drugs to take effect and all the while we inch closer to observe. His back legs then go and he sits down stern-ally. We think he is out so we approach and start to hacksaw through his old collar. The sudden noise and commotion wake him up a little and he pulls himself up again. We back off, fast, but in a final valiant effort the drugs have the final say and he slumps over, snoring gently.

From there we work in silence cutting off the old collar, sliding the new one into place and bolting on the counter weight. Others are taking body measurements, feet, shoulder height, ivory, teeth etc. Rob-the-vet keeps an eye on

Thando recovers from the drugs – a little groggy prehaps but fine

his vitals and after 20 mins we are finished and Rob administers the reversal drugs. Thando, ever the fighter, doesn’t take long to stand up and once he has taken a couple of steps we leave him in peace to sleep off the rest of the effects.

Later that evening we return to see how he is doing. He has moved only a short distance underneath the trees but is doing well and probably contemplating moving north again, far too exciting down south here!