I just didn’t know.
chapter seven
The psychic arrived at the boma after a particularly harrowing ‘dawn patrol’ with the herd again threatening to break through the fence. She came down from time to time and as I saw her coming I made a quick excuse to go and check fences on the other side, leaving her to David.
When I returned half an hour later, she had gone.
‘What did she want?’
‘Just to sprinkle some more of her good vibrations.’
David’s face was contorted and I could see he was battling valiantly to control a guffaw. ‘She also said she had communicated with the elephants and they had told her it was now safe for me to go in and walk with them.’
That set us off – perhaps it was the tension, but we broke up laughing so hard our stomachs hurt.
But when I stopped wheezing, I realized that as I was not convinced the psychic was helping matters it was best if she left us to our own methods.
I radioed Françoise and told her to tell the psychic politely that we had no further need of her services and to book a flight for her back to Johannesburg. As far as Françoise was concerned, that at least meant no more peanut-butter sandwiches on the menu.
However, in a bizarre way the psychic’s prophecy did come true several days later. We did indeed have to go into the boma with the herd.
Nana and Frankie still regularly toppled trees towards the fence, but the ones close enough to do any damage had all been felled. However, there was a particularly tall acacia in a thicket some distance away that they started working on. Initially I didn’t worry too much as it seemed too far from the electric barrier. But when it crashed down, it ‘bounced’ and some of the top branches snagged the wires, straining them to breaking point.
This caused an electrical short with lots of crackling which fortunately frightened the elephants off. Even more fortuitously, the wires didn’t snap so there was still current. But the elephants would soon sense that this was a weak link and launch an assault. All they had to do was bump the fallen tree forward, the wires would give and there would be no stopping them.
We had to act quickly. We examined all options but it soon became crystal clear that there was only one solution: someone had to sneak into the boma with a bowsaw and hack the branches off the fence. But who would do such a crazy thing, and how?
David stepped forward. ‘I’ll go – as long as you keep them off me,’ he said, eyeing the giants flapping their ears angrily on the other side.
I needed to think it through. David was volunteering for something I had never heard of being done before: getting into a sealed electrified enclosure with seven wild elephants and no quick escape route. It was insane, no matter how you looked at it.
I anguished for an hour or so. Could it be that by condoning this I was sending a young man to his death? What would I tell his parents, good friends of my family, if something went wrong?
Devising a plan would help me decide, so I concentrated on visualizing the scene. Then we would dry-run it until we had it right. David’s life depended on that.
First we would miss a feed, then once the elephants were really hungry we would throw bales of alfalfa over the other side of the boma to keep the animals occupied as far away from David as possible.
Then I would place two rangers with radios at the energizers to control the current. This would be switched off at exactly the moment David was ready to climb in. As soon as he was in the boma the electricity had to be turned back on, otherwise the animals might sense the power cut and break out while we were busy. This, of course, would leave David trapped with 8,000 volts imprisoning him with the elephants.
Third, a ranger would be with me as my ‘communicator’ to relay instructions and operate my radio. I would have the rifle, ready to shoot but only if David’s life was unquestionably threatened.
We rehearsed this several times until we were as prepared as we would ever be. David seemed calm – almost nonchalant – and I marvelled at his courage. He had been on the receiving end of the animals’ intense aggression every day for the past week, and he was still prepared to go in.
I gave the signal and the rangers started heaving food over the fence to entice the herd away from us and hopefully keep them engrossed long enough for David to finish the job.
As Nana led her hungry charges to the food bonanza, I looked at David. ‘You still want to do this?’
He shrugged. ‘If I don’t, we’ll lose them.’
‘OK,’ I said, sweating at the mere thought of the enormous risk he was taking.
I nodded to the ranger next to me who picked up his radio and shouted to the energizer crew: ‘Power off – go!’
David scaled the fence. Once he was in I threw over the bowsaw and gave the order: ‘Power on – now!’
The switches went up. David was now caged inside the boma.
I loaded the rifle, steadied the barrel on the Land Rover’s open door and zeroed in the sights on the animals on the far side.
David had his back to the herd and was sawing the offending branches with piston-pumping arms while I gave a running commentary from over the rifle sights. ‘Everything’s OK. No problem, no problem. It’s working. You are doing fine; it’s a piece of cake. Just a few more moments …’
In a blink everything changed. Frankie, who was slightly behind the rest of the herd, must have heard a noise as she suddenly looked up. Enraged that
