I radioed for Gideon, who came immediately when he heard the terror in my voice. “Check the barns,” I begged. “Check the enclosures.”
I knew that these elephants had worked with humans in zoos and circuses, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t charge someone who invaded their domain. I also knew that elephants preferred the lower voices of males—I always tried to make my voice huskier when I spoke to them. Since high-pitched voices are nervous voices, elephants associate female pitches with anxiety. And a child’s voice would fall into that category.
I knew a man once who owned property high up in the game reserve, who had gone bushwhacking with his two little girls and found himself surrounded by a wild elephant herd. He told his daughters to roll themselves up in a ball and be as small as possible. No matter what happens, he said, do not lift your head. Two large females came forward to smell the girls and pushed against them a little bit, but they did not injure a hair on the head of either child.
But I would not be there to tell Jenna to get into a tiny ball. And she would be fearless, because she’d seen me interact with the elephants.
I drove the ATV into the closest enclosure, the African one, because I did not think Jenna could have gotten too far. I raced past the barn and the pond and the high spot where the elephants sometimes went in the cool mornings. I stood at the top of the highest ridge and took out my binoculars and tried to spot movement as far as my eye could see.
I spent twenty minutes driving around, tears in my eyes, wondering how I would explain to Thomas that our daughter was missing—and then Gideon’s voice crackled on the radio. “I’ve got her,” he said.
He told me to meet him at the cottage, and there I found my baby on Nevvie’s lap, sucking on a Popsicle, all sticky palms and cherry lips. “Mama,” Jenna said, holding it out to me. “I scream.”
But I couldn’t look at her. I was too busy focusing on Nevvie, who seemed oblivious to the fact that I was so angry I was shaking. Nevvie’s hand rested on my daughter’s head like a blessing. “Someone woke up crying,” she said. “Looking for you.”
It was not an excuse. It was an explanation. If anything, I was the one to blame, because I had left my baby alone.
Suddenly I knew I wouldn’t yell, and I wouldn’t reprimand Nevvie for taking my daughter away without asking me first.
Jenna had needed a mother, and I hadn’t been there. Nevvie had needed a child, so that she could still parent someone.
At the time, it seemed a match made in Heaven.
The strangest behavior I have ever witnessed among elephants happened in the Tuli Block, on the bank of a dry riverbed during a prolonged drought, in an area where many different animals passed. The night before, lions had been sighted. That morning, there was a leopard on the bank above. But the predators had gone, and an elephant named Marea had given birth.
It was a normal birth—the herd protected her during labor by facing outward; they trumpeted in ecstasy when the calf arrived; and Marea managed to get him up on his feet by balancing him against her leg. She dusted him and introduced him to the herd, each family member touching the baby and checking in.
All of a sudden an elephant named Thato began to walk up the length of the dry riverbed. Now, she was an acquaintance of this herd, but not a member of it. I have no idea what she was doing alone, away from the rest of her own family. As she came by the newborn calf, she wrapped her trunk around his neck and began to lift him.
We see all the time how a mother might try to lift her newborn to get him moving, by sliding her trunk beneath his belly or between his legs. But it is not normal to pick a calf up by the neck. No mother would do that intentionally. The little calf was slipping out of the grasp of Thato’s trunk as she walked away. The more he slipped, the higher she lifted, trying to keep that baby in her grip. Finally he fell, slamming hard to the ground.
That was the catalyst that spurred the herd to action. There was rumbling and trumpeting and chaos, and the family members touched the newborn to make sure he was all right, to prove that in fact he had not been hurt. Marea gathered him close and pulled him between her legs.
There was so much about this situation I did not understand. I’d seen elephants pick up babies when they were in the water, to keep them from drowning. I’d seen elephants lift babies that were lying down to get them to stand on their feet. But I had never seen an elephant try to carry off a calf, like a lioness with a cub.
I didn’t know what made Thato think she could get away with kidnapping another’s calf. I didn’t know if that was her intent, or if she scented the lion and the leopard and felt he was in danger.