Mammoth Magic: For the Love of Elephants (Part 3)
Disoriented, my heart overflowing with gratitude, I asked Julius, “What is the meaning of this? There is a message here. I think the elephants want us to take their message out into the world... My mother died in August,” I blurted out. The sentence hung in the air. I sat up higher, startled by this statement that came out of nowhere. Every fibre in my body was now awake letting the event of the morning coalesce with the sentence.
Elephants, 300 to 400 elephants, came in procession across the savannah towards us. I lay on the floor of the Land Cruiser, the door open, 2 to 3 feet above the ground, two cameras around my neck, with the shutter whirring as I recorded the event. They came in respectful silence like mourners to the bereaved. Whole families came, distant relatives, grandparents, parents, children.
The need-to-analyse part of myself thought perhaps the message was that every 15 minutes an elephant is slaughtered for its tusks—its two big front teeth. Do you know that Christmas song?
All I want from you dear is your two front teeth,
your two front teeth, your two front teeth.
All I want from you dear is your two front teeth,
So I can make a pretty trinket.
The sense that the endless procession of elephants was for my personal growth? I balked at the thought—to claim such sacred moment for myself felt egotistical. Yet that’s how it felt. When I described the experience to my husband over the phone later that night, I could not stop my tears. The don’t-make-a-fool-of-yourself part of myself tried to intervene—what will the other guests think, a woman travelling solo, crying into her phone? My broken heart banished the thought; the flow of tears increased.
My time in Amboseli continues to speak to me, like a dream that is so big it refuses to let me forget and slip back into unconsciousness. Every day I was with the elephants, hundreds of thousands of animals were being burned to death in Australia. The news clips were horrific. The last statistic I heard was a BILLION animals died. That only speaks to the animals, not the insects, the microorganisms in the soil, the trees, and the plants.…5.6 million acres torched. How can we even grasp the extent of the damage to our planet?
Botswana, renowned for its wildlife and wilderness, announced that it will allow trophy hunters to kill elephants in 2020, thereby reversing a policy that endeared the country to conservationists and animal rights advocates. Botswana justifies its decision saying that the hunting licenses will help support local communities and conservation efforts. Imagine—this year we will allow snipers to hunt for one month along the migrant trail in Mexico so we don’t have to worry about the numbers of migrant people we can’t take care of at the border. There are better ways to deal with human wildlife conflict and the immigration crisis.
Elephants are highly intelligent animals with a social structure and emotional life like humans. Dame Daphne Sheldrick, who devoted her life to rehabilitating and reintegrating orphaned elephants into the wild said, “You have to think in human terms. How does a child feel when it has lost its whole family and is suddenly in the hands of the enemy?”
Elephants mourn. They experience grief and loss and can suffer PTSD from trauma inflicted by humans. They express love, show compassion, joy, playfulness, and altruism. They communicate over long distances using infrasonic frequencies from about 1Hz to 20Hz, heard by humans as rumbling. You can learn some elephant speak here.
I love nature, wild places, and wild animals. African animals have held a place in my heart since childhood. They have universal appeal. Elephants, lions, and giraffes are global ambassadors for the protection of our natural world. Each of these species is being decimated and faces extinction in the next couple of decades. EXTINCTION!!! Can you imagine a world without elephants, lions, giraffes? I can’t imagine telling my great grandchildren, “Yes, I saw them, walking free on the plains of Kenya. They made my heart sing, they were so amazing, so beautiful, so strange, so extraordinary.”
I can imagine their eyes looking at me in disbelief. “You actually saw them in the wild? Where did they go? Why did they die? What did you do to try to save them?”
