Amboseli: Kilimanjaro's Royal Court

11.04.10

Since getting to Kenya, we’ve been getting to know our area (Kimana Group Ranch) and the human-wildlife conflicts that face it. Talking with local people has been really eye-opening, and I’ll talk about that in my next post. But the biggest, baddest problem animal in this area for farmers is the elephant.

I saw a bull get defensive of a matriline in Lake Manyara National Park, but never really fully saw how aggressive they can be until today. I mean, elephants are HUGE. They’re absolutely massive. But I always saw them as gentle creatures. You can tell where they’ve been because there are trees down everywhere, but this isn’t aggressive (or so I still believe anyway).

We went to Amboseli National Park today. It was wet and rainy. We had lectures over our land cruiser radios, baha.

Elephants usually leave the park when it gets really wet. There are 3 main wetlands that they rely on within the park, but when water is everywhere, they are free to roam. So we weren’t expected to see many elephants, but they were everywhere. I probably saw around 130 elephants today. And one of them was a little punk.

There was a herd right next to the road, so we stopped to watch them. They were just sauntering along and foraging. And there was a massive male just minding his own business. A younger male, the punk, confronted him and they fought. It was actually scary, and I was praying that no tusks would be broken because they were locked much of the time. The larger male just pushed him off as many times as the punk came at him. And so the punk started messing around with a female, then back to the older male. He was just looking to cause trouble.

Then. Then ... he trumpeted and charged one of our land cruisers. Thank GOD it was facing the other direction and our students were able to evade him, but their lives flashed before my eyes. I can’t even begin to describe ...

Moral of the story: elephants are awesome and beautiful, but oh they can trample you.