An Elephant Bull Called Elizabeth and Other Short Stories from Africa

Marula the Elephant

Here I go anthropomorphising yet again but then, had you known Marula, you to could not have failed to recognise the intelligence and determination involved in harvesting the yearly crop of marula fruit within the confines of Spurwing Island's camp grounds.

Of course most would be surprised if an elephant bull in his late thirties or early forties did not remember where, within his home range, the fruit trees where and when they fruited.  How else would a wild animal survive through the seasons?  However not everyone expects animals to be clever enough to come up with a plan to access a tree that has become off limits due to those pesky humans.

First off Marula had to realise that he is no longer free to just wander up to this tree and eat his fill of fruit at whatever time might suit himself.  Not a hard concept to grasp if, every time you come onto Spurwing Island, you get chased off.  Every other resident elephant had learnt this lesson, opted for the quiet life and left the camp in peace.  Marula on the other hand seems to have realised that the rewards for accessing a tree that no-one else went near were all the greater for it and so his scheming began.

His first plan involved no rocket science but then it didn't need to.  Come to the island in the middle of the night when the humans were asleep and leave before they woke up.  'Simples' as they say.  Occasionally the pull of the fruit would override common sense and Marula would arrive before the game drives had left, via the narrow causeway connecting us to the mainland, for the afternoon activity.  Likewise he would, on occasion, over-endulge and so only just be leaving as the morning game drive went out.  In consequence, every now and then, he and the guides would find themselves sharing the causeway.  Marula's body language clearly indicating his knowledge that he was not meant to be there, the guides chuckling at a full grown elephant trying to behave non-chalant whilst looking over his shoulder and trying  clear the area at best possible speed without appearing to be doing so.

Now I can hear the protests over keeping Marula away from his favourite fruit given that he was the resident whilst we were clearly the interlopers.  There is something in that and I would preferred to have left Marula to his own devices if only national parks did not rely on tourism to earn their keep.  Tourism means having camps and when you have a family friendly camp you sometimes have to put in an low, unobtrusive, electric fence around most of the camp, supplemented by a six foot offset of ground level to the front protected against wave action by being clad in stonework.  This meant that your guests and their children are kept  safe whilst walking between their accommodation and the bar and pool area.  An elephant bull that has the rest of one thousand four hundred square kilometres to roam in can be an unwelcome surprise and even dangerous inside the confines of a camp.

One aspect of Marula's raids that left guests and staff alike in a state of awe was the fact that this huge, rotund animal managed to hoist himself up the vertical split level clad in stonework designed to keep him out.  Though he was never silly enough to actually treat us to a view of his climbing technique he performed the task without ever damaging either the wall or himself, certainly he harboured an totally unexpected talent that his fellow elephant were unable to match.

As is always the way with such skirmishing there was a constant adapting of tactics to suit the situation.  We had, with the warden's permission of course, chased Marula off the island in daylight hours using noise and our superior numbers to 'scare' him off.  He had responded by visiting whilst we were asleep.

Accepting that we had been outsmarted the decision was made to re-activate an electric fence that cut across the causeway.  An elephant would have to swim far out into the lake to go round the fence's end or face an unpleasant jolt from it.

The new strategy worked for a little while but it did not take long for Marula to figure things out. He quickly realised that it was the wire that was electrified, if he avoided that he was free to put his foot against a fence pole, push the whole thing over, then gently step between the fallen strands without ever getting a shock.