If an elephant falls in the jungle and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Monday, June 22nd.

I think the answer is yes. It makes a big sound. Ok, I was there to hear it. It was the craziest thing I have seen so far - I guess because it was unfathomable. You simply can't imagine it as it will actually be.

You may be wondering what in the world I'm talking about.
Well the tent next to me is now occupied by Doctor Debbie, visiting for two weeks from the US. She is a vet, and is here setting up an exchange (I think) with the private zoo she works at in the States and Lewa's vet, Dr. Chege.

Apart from having someone to talk to during lunch, Debbie also has the inside info on Chege, who works for the Kenya Wildlife Service, serves almost 10,000 km squared, and is THE busiest man I have ever seen!

When I heard they were going out in the field I practically screamed, Can I come! and I'll admit that I raised my hand high, like a child dying to get picked by the teacher.
The truck was full (the front, that is) so I sat in the back, where I've been dying to sit ever since I came here (people are always like - Don't be ridiculous white girl, sit in the front - although they don't say the 'white girl' part out loud). Of course first off I got a chunk of dust in my eye, but found the shades and was grand.

We drove to nearby Buffalo Springs Game Reserve, where some tourists had reported seeing an injured elephant. And let me tell you, when we found it there was a van of tourists there, cameras at the ready. I almost wanted to tell them "Out of my way, folks, don't you know who I am? I am here to take pictures for Lewa." Until one of them told me he works with Elodie all the time, runs his own photography safari tours all over Africa, and was taking photos for Africa Geographic. Ouch, I am so nobody.

So Chege loaded the dart gun, and told us all to get back in the vehicle. Debbie told me that one drop of that stuff would kill a human, which is why he stepped away from us to do that thing doctors do when the squirt a bit out of the tip of the needle before starting.

Sitting in the back of the truck my lens wasn't wide enough to capture the dart gun sticking out the front window, so I focussed on the animal, a female African elephant. I didn't know what would happen. I pictured the poor thing getting shot, and rearing up on her hind legs the way horses do in the movies, then galloping off into the sunset (although it wasn't yet midday).

He made a good shot. And the elephant moved around a bit, but really the wounded leg, which was swollen to twice the size of the other limbs, prevented her from moving much. She looked around at us and probably thought, That's it. Today is the last day of my life. This sucks.

We watched and watched. I wanted to look away. In fact I chanced a glance around at the armed guard, Muhammad, who was sitting next to me in the back. But only for a second - didn't want to miss anything.

Suddenly after a few minutes of silence, and waiting, BOOM!
She just fell over to the ground.
I was shocked. I don't even know how to tell you that an elephant is a large animal, and you don't realize the extent of it until you see one fall.

Okay, they said. Take this paper, and write down what we say in these boxes when we tell you. Great I thought, I am supposed to be recording important heart rates, and taking pictures? Write down that its original rate was 20, Debbie told me. How could she tell when we were 20 meters away? Apparently university pays off.

We went over and they started. Placed a towel over the eyes and head, poured water over it to keep the temperature down. Debbie started scraping the ear so she could attach the heart rate monitor through the elephant's thick skin.

Chege went around to the leg, and before he started said Can you get a close up of that?
I approached the leg. It was a hole with some white pus inside. I zoomed in as my stomach turned. Blood, fine, but pus... No. Just writing it makes my eyes water.

It was a bullet wound, but they couldn’t find the bullet. Chege cleaned out all the dead flesh and pus. He flushed and flushed with peroxide and a pair of scissors, and his finger. I was hiding behind my lens, snapping away, separated from the grossness by a wall of plastic and megapixels.

Then they injected the poor old gal with antibiotics. They found another bullet wound in the ear. A hole right through the centre of the lovely, big, grey, jumbo elephant ear. Who did this? What happened?

They did the same stuff over there, of course with Chege pausing periodically to say, Can you get a close-up of this? Me clicking away while stifling a gag. The other tourists were having a heyday. I was too. Debbie would tell me the numbers every now and again and I would juggle my camera with the pen and paper to write it down.

Finally they were cleaning up. I looked around. The trunk was propped open with a stick. She was snoring lightly (the elephant). They told me that the anesthetic puts her completely to sleep and if the trunk closed she would suffocate.

They injected her with the reversal drug and were like, Quick! Get back to the car, it could work quickly!
So we did.
We waited. We watched. She got up.

The thing is, they told me that elephants almost never lie down. Or if they do, it's for less than an hour. They are so big that they can crush their own nerves, and if you do surgery on an elephant and they don't get up they will die, just from being down. Imagine that!
So that's the crucial point.

But up she got. Looked around at us. And slowly limped away.
What else can I say? It was one of the most unusual and incredible things I have ever seen.

The journey:




The Elephant:


















































Going home: