By popular demand! Here's my story of an elephant called Dionysus. Enjoy!
It was sticking out of the top of one of my favourite books. Just a little blue corner, hardly noticeable. But when I pulled out the blue card with the picture of the elephant, I remembered. The card was a birthday card from my mother. On it she had drawn smiley faces, and kisses. I knew why she’d sent an elephant card. It was all because of an elephant called Dionysus.
When I was younger, I ran a tiny bush-camp in the centre of Zambia. My days started before the dawn, when the sun was just an orangey glow in the corner of the sky. The night noises surrendered to the morning chorus as I pulled myself out of bed, grabbed my rifle and opened my tent to the chill air which still lingered from the night. It was my job to make sure that camp was secure – a tricky job, considering we were right in the middle of a national park full of lion, leopard, elephant and buffalo.
This was my time – walking around camp looking for any visitors – whether those with silky yellow fur and blazing eyes, or with a trunk and tusks. I always secretly hoped for the elephants to be there, hulks looming from the darkness, excited squeals or gentle rumbles, delicate trunks picking the last juicy leaves from our trees. I had given up on my idea of a vegetable garden, having lost too many plants to their appetites.
When my mother came to stay at camp, late in 2001, I introduced her to my elephants with pride. A coalition of elephant bulls had made our little corner their home. The boys, fully grown and impressively tusked, had moved in. Being a trainee safari guide, it was part of my job to study a particular animal each year. How could I resist when the elephants were constantly on my doorstep? And so my love affair with Dionysus started, and like any infatuated female, I was desperate to introduce my mother to the object of my affections, sure that she would fall in love as I had.
Our first day was a success – driving out from camp in my rattling land cruiser, we soon found the group. They were hard to miss! Reggie and Ronnie, the tough guys, jousting in the early sun, Credence and Clearwater chomping their way through a monkey-bread tree, and Occuloides and Dionysus dozing gently in the shade. Over the time I had studied them, they had become used to my appearing, in a loud, smelly land cruiser, and they paid me no heed. Except Dionysus, who would always come and greet me. With my mother safely in the passenger seat, I climbed up onto the land cruiser bonnet and spread out my notebooks, my camera and the bag of oranges I always carried. Peeling an orange, I watched for Dionysus’ trunk to raise, scenting the sweet juice, and waited for him to approach closely. As I dropped my orange rinds over the edge of the bonnet, he sidled up and nonchalantly reached for the rinds, enveloping them entirely with the fingers at the end of his trunk and stuffing them into his mouth. I knew I could always seduce him with orange rinds. My mother laughed out loud.
“Cheap date!” she said.
It became a routine for us, piling into the cruiser and driving out to find the group. Until one day when we found them, distressed. As I drove up, Occuloides appeared, and charged the vehicle, eyes wide and ears outstretched. He’d never done that before. I was unprepared, accelerating only at the last moment to avoid him. I moved the vehicle further away. Binoculars out, I scanned the bush. They were all there, except for Dionysus. What had happened to make him disappear and for the rest to be so agitated?
“What’s wrong with them, darling?” my mother asked. I had no idea, but it was clear that something had upset them. Each elephant was pacing, swaying from side to side, emitting panicked rumbles and the occasional full trumpet. I picked up my radio.
“Camp from mobile, come in please”.
“Yes, Anna, this is Jon, go ahead”. My scout. He must know if anything had happened on this side of the river.
“Jon, I’ve found the boys but something’s wrong, they’re panicky and Occuloides has charged us. I can’t see Dionysus anywhere. Has anything happened on this side?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word “poachers”.
“I’m sorry, Anna, I think we have, I heard shots fired last night.” My insides turned.
“Anna, can you see vultures circling? Are there any hyenas around?” I scanned the bush for the typical signs of a kill, but saw nothing.
“Negative, Jon, nothing here. Are you sure you heard shots?” Please, please no. Not my beautiful boy.
“I’m sorry Anna, yes, it sounded like an AK”. An AK47. The poacher’s weapon of choice. Utterly indiscriminate, it fired six hundred rounds per minute, thudding into and shredding the flesh of anything in its path. I tried to keep my voice normal.
“Okay, Jon, we’ll keep looking. If Dionysus shows up at camp, please radio me, over”.
“Sure thing, Anna. Out.”
Our efforts that day to find Dionysus were fruitless. Around the camp fire that night, I sobbed into my gin and tonic, while my ears strained for any sound that might indicate an elephant. My heart breaking to the crescent moon that rose that evening, I spent a sleepless night.
The next day, and for many days after, were just as frustrating. I monitored the radio, waiting for any sign, any scrap of news that my elephant had somehow survived, was safe, was somewhere in the area. On my mother’s and my expeditions, I minutely examined any elephant footprint that I found, willing it to be Dionysus. I knew his footprint intimately. Dionysus had a deep fissure across his front left foot, the souvenir, I assumed, of an accident when he was a calf. I searched his favourite waterholes, drove deep into the bush to his scratching trees, the bark worn smooth from hours of rubbing to rid himself of the irritating ticks in his skin. I walked up and down the Luwi dry river bed, eyes scanning the banks, probing for a glimpse of grey skin, a flash of ivory. My nights became waiting games, sitting up with Jon and my mother around the camp fire, poring over maps of his last sighting, trying to figure out where he might have gone. My mother, knowing the bond I had nurtured, sat next to me, her hand warm on my back, stroking and stroking as I begged Dionysus for the hundredth time to show himself, to show me some sign that he was alive, that his rumbles still pierced the savannah, forest and river that surrounded us. I had reached one of the lowest points I could reach. I felt somehow responsible for him, that had I not encouraged our bond perhaps he would not be so trusting of humans. Was this my fault?
Weeks later, and my mother’s last night in camp, there was still no sign of Dionysus. Reports had come in of the carcass of a bull elephant, a mere fourteen kilometres from camp. The radio had been blaring, the Wildlife Authority asking for more information, for photos to be taken of the carcass, samples of blood, of bone, for the exact co-ordinates. I usually leapt at the chance to be involved, but this time I couldn’t, scared what I might find. Mum and Jon consoled me as the night drew in, and the radio became silent.
Midnight, and pandemonium broke loose in camp. A creaking, groaning and gurgling as our one thousand litre water tank was pulled from its platform and came smashing down to the ground. Mum and I leapt out of bed, grabbed torches, and ran outside. Stopping underneath the acacia tree in the centre of camp, we shone our torches and saw a beautiful sight. Dionysus, alive, standing next to the destroyed water tank, dipping his trunk in and out, siphoning up the water and squirting it into his mouth. I could hear the splashes and rumbles in his stomach as he drank deeply. I let out an involuntary cry, and my mother gripped my arms tightly as we watched him amble slowly over to our acacia tree and stretch his trunk into the highest branches, searching for the juiciest shoots. I looked up at him, vast in the moonlight, and slowly backed my mother to the far side of the tree, where we crouched down and smiled to each other in the darkness.
The following morning, we surveyed the carnage of camp. The water tank was split in two, the water now soaked into the ground. Our kitchen had received a direct hit, the fridge overturned, our fruit eaten. But as I walked into camp, I saw the vast baggy-trousered backside of my elephant disappearing into the riverbed. My Dionysus, the survivor, was back, and safe. And that was all that mattered.
