The gunshot makes no sound. I’m not sure if it’s been fired until I see the matriarch’s knees buckle under the weight of her one and a half-ton elephant mass. Two minutes behind schedule, she melts to the ground and rolls onto her side. In this kind of operation every minute, if not second, is valuable.
“We have only fifteen minutes,” the vet tells us. We need twenty.
“It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve done this. Each time is different and equally dangerous to the animals and people,” Iain Douglas- Hamilton, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the African elephant explains to the BBC cameraman. “Things can go wrong.” as we exit our trucks to approach the fallen matriarch.
I’m visiting Save the Elephants in northern Kenya; invited by Iain, founder of the organization, to join his team replacing a radio collar on an older elephant. The BBC is filming the process. Minutes earlier a member of our group had driven a Landrover into the herd, separating the matriarch from her sisters, aunts and daughters. 
Confused and lost without their leader, the herd, now blocked from us by a circle of five vehicles, huddle together with trunks held high, and ears spread wide, trying to sense the enemy, deciding whether or not to charge us. Even the baby elephant is agitated, mimicking the adults before hiding under a larger female for protection.
Earlier at the research center Iain’s daughter Saba (the female star of Animal Planets Big Cat Diaries) had shown me the result of a failed attempt to calm an irate elephant. The crushed piece of metal, barely recognizable as a truck, had a puncture that went from the back through two rows of seats into the front dash. Using it’s tusks the animal had turned the Landrover up onto itself, smashing the engine and hood into the floor board. The driver, inches from being stabbed to death, remained in the vehicle, while the elephant then tossed the car around with its trunk as if it were a tree branch.
“This was a very large bull,” Saba told me, smiling.
“Twelve minutes,” the vet says to everyone, and places my fingers at the tip of the matriarch’s trunk into which he has already positioned a thin stick to keep her two finger-like nostrils open. “Make sure that stick stays in place,” he tells me.
“Today is good for collaring. Not too hot. Sedated elephants mustn’t get overheated,” Iain says, his British accent hardly detectable after 40 years of living in the African bush.
Sweat beads up on the vet’s forehead as he moves with urgency to fill a vial with blood from the motionless animal. A member of the herd trumpets in protest and two guys pour buckets of water onto the matriarch’s delicate ear skin.
“Those veins regulate her body temperature.” Saba tells the cameraman.
I remember years ago reading Iain’s first book, Among the Elephants. There was a picture of a three-year-old Saba, barefoot next to her dad, with a herd of elephants in the background. I remember wishing it was me in that photograph. Twenty-five years later Saba has that same born in the wild smile.
With every earthy smelling exhale her warm breath fans my hand. I match my breathing with hers, hoping she will feel protected and safe in her unconscious state. The whiskers covering her thick-skinned trunk are hard like wire, and up this close she is more massive, wrinkled, and dry than I could have imagined. 
The seven people now surrounding her seem tiny in comparison. Under any other circumstance I wouldn’t have the honor of being this close to a wild elephant, yet I’m conflicted about what we do in the name of research. I know the tracking information is used to establish protected corridors and minimize elephant/human conflict with surrounding communities. But how can we be absolutely certain we are helping, more than we are hurting these highly intelligent beings?
“Nine minutes,” says Dominique, our timekeeper.
“When she wakes, she will jerk herself upright. Be mindful,” the vet reminds everyone.
The old collar’s lock is hidden under the folds of the elephant’s neck. Unreachable. Using a pair of shears one person cuts through the collars six-inch leather and loops a long piece of wire through one of the collars holes. Two men, one sitting on her front leg pushing against her chest for leverage, pull the collar, while two other men on the opposite side of her head push her sagging neck skin out of the way.
“Four minutes,” Dominique says, and the vet checks his watch too.
The old collar gives way and the team feeds the new one along the ground, under her neck, to skilled hands that fasten it together.
“Vizuri.” the vet says. Well done. We pack up the buckets, the old collar, and wire, and the vet removes the twig from her nostril. It’s now up to her fifty-year-old body to find its way back to consciousness. According to the vet, she should stir any second. But she doesn’t. Eyes closed, she is still as death. There is nothing we can do now but wait.
As our trucks pull away, Iain radios to Saba, “I’m not sure why she isn’t up yet,” he says.
My driver is worried too. “A few years ago an elephant died from a collaring operation like this.”
“You never know when the stress is too much, and this big girl has been through this two times before,” he says.
Dominique stands up through the sunroof for a better view. The radio exchanges are mostly in Swahili, but I understand the subdued tone. Then, talking to the one truck that still blocks the other elephants, Iain says, “Let the others go in now.”
As the last Landrover backs away, the herd hesitates, and then an adult elephant approaches the still motionless matriarch. This is risky my driver tells me, because in tying to help the fallen elephant up she could hurt her instead. Everyone is silent and I start to cry. The approaching female is within five feet of her fallen leader when my driver exhales as the matriarch lifts her head and body as if in one motion, unsteadily rising to her feet. For a moment she looks like she will run; but she’s too shaky. The other elephant sniffs her before other members join the greeting. Within two minutes the matriarch finds her balance and steadily moves toward the forest with her family in tow. She looks back once before they disappear.
Several hours later we find the herd grazing as usual, oblivious to our truck’s presence. One of the characteristics Iain has documented about elephants is their amazing memories. They return to old watering holes after decades of drought, and visit graveyards of herd members who’ve died years earlier. So, I don’t wonder if they will remember today’s experience, but in what frame of reference? And how will the baby be different because of what she saw today? I know they won’t forget, so the best I can hope for is that they will forgive.
(If you have a comment about this story I would love to hear it. Rather than emailing me, scroll down to the REPLY box at the end of this page, and write there. Then press SUBMIT. Thanks so much.)
For more information about Save the Elephants go to:
http://www.savetheelephants.org/home.html
Hi Lori – This is AMAZING!! I was so fearful she was shot by a poacher. It felt like I was right there with you in Africa. Your description and suspense held me captive. This story needs to be published so all can share this experience.
Today is Wednesday and I went to Africa. How many can say that?
Nancy @http://blogofavetswife.blogspot.com/
Oh My … Lori … What a magnificence story!!! Your writing beautifully embraces the reader in the moment with breath holding suspense. You wonderfully express honoring and compassion for the elephants. Keep writing … sharing your experiences is a gift. Thank You, Thank You
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences and you write very well! I spent time in Kenya and I had the opportunity to meet Dr Iain Douglas Hamilton, I greatly admire him. Now I’m going to take some time to read more about Africa Inside. Thank you very much!
thanks so much Laura for stopping by and for commenting. I loved hearing from you. WHat did you do with Ian? I look forward to staying in touch and hope you will subscribe for my posts (in frequent) as one way of staying in contact.