Napoleon is in musth

As dawn broke we heard elephants outside our tent so went out to try and see them and we came across a small herd, led by the female F121, getting an early morning snack. The light was still dim and so it was hard to see but a couple of the youngsters came out of the bushes and gave us a good view. After about 5 minutes something gave them a fright (not us) and they moved off, and we went up for breakfast and getting the troops ready to try and find Nandipa, Pula, Ntongeni and Nima. We headed out the way we had seen the herd leave the camp and came across them browsing in the Terminalia sericea forest. It was here that I was able to see the Matriarch was F121. The youngsters were in playing mood and were wrestling on the road in front of us. After about 30 minutes they wandered off the road and we decided to move on.
I wanted to find Nandipa and her herd to see how they were all doing, but they had gone the other side of some deep muddy water and so we had to give up on that idea. It was nearly 1000 by that time and getting hot and so I decided to head home, and it was on the road to camp that we saw Napoleon coming towards us. He looked agitated and kept walking directly towards us, very unusual behaviour! Then he started flapping his ears alternatively, the first clue that he was in musth. As he got nearer I could see that his temporal glands were swollen and he had a green penis sheath that was dribbling urine; Napoleon was in full blown musth.

I have known him since I started the project here in 2002 and he has grown into a handsome male elephant. He was called Napoleon because he had a broken tusk, but as you can see it has now grown back.
Unfortunately we were in deep sand and in thick vegetation so I could not turn around or reverse fast enough to get out of his way, so we had to stand our ground and see what he got up to. After shaking the palm tree in front of us he stood about 6m away and gave us a couple of head shakes and dusted – it was unsure of what to do about us and if we needed anything doing to!!! He was also very agitated – and after the show of power in front of us he spent a while rubbing his temporal glands against the palm tree, he was obviously uncomfortable. He soon got bored of us and ambled off and we were able to get a whole ½ hour focal as well as a dung sample. A great start to the day.