An Excelephant Moment

Ezulwini

I saw a firefly up close for the first time back in October. It was caught in a spider web in a hostel corridor in Bangkok. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first, the bulb on its back looked to me like a light emitting diode and for a while I was amazed at how a spider had managed to get it into its web. Had someone put it there? Was it flung into the web by accident? I was in unchartered territory! I pointed this out to someone who informed me – somewhat impatiently – that it was a firefly. Aha! This made much more sense than a spider having acquired an interest in light emitting diodes, or someone taking the time out of their day to attach one, and an energy source I couldn’t see, to a spider’s web.

Over the next few months in the Greater Kruger area of South Africa as the rains finally came through, delivering a welcome end to the dry season, the bush sprung into life. I mean, it was already alive, but it hadn’t rained for a while. Highs of forty odd degrees Celsius had dried up the reservoirs leaving the plant and animal life to make do with what little water there was. Where there had been dust and sand, suddenly there was thick and tall grass. Where there had been grey and spindly bushes, there was now a wall of vibrant green – baby green I called it – that stretches out as far as the eye can see. Making it rather difficult to point out when something is hiding behind one of the many green bushes – “look, behind that green bush” one might say if you want to be looked at as if you were being intentionally unhelpful… This new abundance of life, which had been patiently waiting for the right conditions to explode on the scene, gave rise to other life and animal activity. Flies, spiders, squirrels, field mice (bushveld mice), mosquitos all enjoy the cover and sustenance these new conditions provide them. Larger animals too showed great interest in the fresh and thick grass that now blanketed the dust bowl they had been scraping at and digging into for food.

A ten-minute drive off the main road, just outside a town called Hoedspruit, is where basecamp was for my stay. For three months I lived with Sharon and Robin Haussmann, who had kindly invited me to their home to get a taste of Africa and to try my hand in the conservation space. Situated in the Balule wildlife reserve, against a fence to the south that separates one reserve from another, the camp faces out into the open system of wild bush that stretches all the way to Zimbabwe in the north and Mozambique in the East. From the kitchen that looks onto the garden you can see out to the north; the bush slips away from the garden fence down to a watering hole and then off into all those green bushes. Often in the mornings or midafternoons we are visited by elephants, rhinos, giraffes, and impalas, all who come to have a drink, play in the waters, and enjoy some of the fresh grass. Around the edge of the camp, the grass grows particularly thick and luscious. Full of nutrients extracted from the deep soil, an enticing meal for any large mammal.

This brings me to one very special night. Ezulwini, Zulu for ‘in heaven’ or ‘in the sky’, is the name given to an elephant that is colloquially known as one of the ‘big tuskers’ of Greater Kruger and of South Africa. He stands easily four or five meters off the ground (‘in the sky’) and carries two enormous tusks that reach all the way to the floor weighing in at around fifty kilos each. He was known to be in the area and had even made an appearance at base camp, but we had been away while he visited. We drove out and looked for him but the elusive Ezulwini evaded our search, which is impressive for such a large animal. Yesterday over a hundred elephants moved through the area to stop at the waterhole, play, and enjoy the dense grass and fresh leaves. Some coming right up to the fence with their calves, some of who were no bigger than the two dogs that watched the elephants with us.

Later, sat in an armchair out in the garden having just finished work for the day, I looked up to the northeast corner of the garden and, somehow stealthily nestled under a tree, was this enormous elephant. Noticing the giant tusks, I clocked that this was Ezulwini. I called out to Sharon who had been fearful we would not get to see this magnificent creature in the short time I had left before returning home. We got up and approached him. He was aware of us, watching us calmly as we moved toward him. Sharon spoke to him, “my boy” she called him, this was not their first meeting. We watched him as he gripped tufts of grass with his trunk, slap off the dirt, before placing it in his mouth, stopping only to collect some marula fruit that had fallen off a tree in the garden onto the other side of the fence. He sniffed them out with his trunk, dropping the grass he had in his mouth and popped the small marulas in its stead.

We stood with him for a while as he moved along the garden fence at one point standing no more than 5 meters away facing me square on. I felt my body move into the stance I had been taught to adopt when fighting. Not because I felt under threat, I didn’t, but because it occurred to me that if that elephant wanted to, the short electric fence between him and I would do very little to stop him and to hell was I going to be caught flat footed. Okay, maybe I felt a little intimidated. And then he was gone, he wondered off to join the other elephants. Sharon told me that he shows the other elephants how to behave.

We returned to our seats and our evening with the sound of many enormous jaws crunching on grass and heavy feet padding down the softened earth. As the sunset and darkness began to settle around us small lights began to flicker in the garden by the trees. At first, only one or two, then a third, a fourth. As I stared out into the growing darkness of the bush, I could see many more, more than I had ever seen before. I pointed this out to Sharon and Robin who told me that fireflies were a good sign that the environment was in balance and healthy, their absence being a sign that something is out of kilter. Sharon, who could not see the fireflies from where she sat, stood to walk toward the garden fence for a closer look. I decided to follow her and as I stood and began to walk into the garden I looked up at Sharon’s gasp. Ezulwini was standing to our left right at the fence; it had been his jaws and feet we could hear. The fireflies flickered and danced around him, I wondered if something about the elephant’s presence encouraged the fireflies, their dung, the torn grass, pheromones? Who knows, it didn’t matter. We stood in silence and watched him, illuminated by the soft glow of kitchen lights, as the dark canvas of wild bush solidified itself to our right broken only by the dancing fireflies. A big tusker and light emitting diodes dancing in the dark.