Another elephant story...

After I washed up from my run and had breakfast last Thursday morning, Jon, Karen, and I decided to venture out on our own South African walking safari. George, our cat decided to follow us as well. I can't remember what animals we spotted that morning other than some really cool birds (I got to test out my new binoculars) and a couple of ungulates (hoofed animals).

During our safari, George the cat, was completely freaking out and meowing like we were going to run into trouble. He wasn't too happy but we told him to go home as we kept on walking.

It wasn't long before I spotted the elephant, Rex, in the distance. We brought out our cameras and snapped a bunch of photos like we were trigger happy and then moved on. After reaching the far end of a pond, I looked back and saw Rex again in the distance. We had a really good view of him, since we seemed to be closer to him than we were for the first sighting.  Our journey continued as we followed the path that wrapped around the pond, a bit closer to Rex.  We ended up getting very close and took some pics of each of us with Rex in the background. I walked a little bit ahead of Karen and Jon to get a better view of the elephant, and then I saw Rex turn and look at me. He started to walk towards me and I began to get nervous. 

"I think he's following us," I said. 

We backtracked so that we were on one side of the pond and Rex on the other. He lifted his trunk and slightly moved it side to side as if he was catching our scent. The breeze was blowing our smell straight to him. And, again of course, I took a picture even though he was spooking me out.

It wasn't long before I remember Karen urgently dictating, "We HAVE to go....NOW," as she began scurrying away as fast as she could as Rex continued to approach. Jon wasn't even phased by the elephant and couldn't understand why Karen was running away so fast. 

I called out to Karen, "We should stick together, come back!!!" 

I'm sure she was thinking, "Are you kidding me?! I'm not going back there."

We were told by Derek and Rich (who had been here a while) that it's best to hold your ground when an elephant is charging or following you, but it's easier said than done when it comes to it. Anyways, Rex hadn't charged us or anything, so we continued on in our walking safari. 

We thought we had shaken him.

After carrying on for something up to 10 mins or so, I look behind us and see the freaking elephant behind us - FOLLOWING US!!!

I'm not sure about Jon, but Karen and I were pretty nervous - we didn't know what to do, so we kept walking. Lucky for us, we stumbled upon the land owner's property which had an electrical perimeter fence that we just walked through. Rex doesn't go near those things, even when they're not turned on because of his previous experiences with them. We were safe.

A substory to this experience relates to George. After we fled from the elephant at the pond, we lost our companion kitty. We were told he usually doesn't disappear for long periods of time and he always is at home in the evening. That night, he didn't come home. I felt so guilty that night for leaving him with the elephant after he made such a fuss about us going away on our walking safari. The next morning, George STILL wasn't on our porch where he usually is.  Eventually Rich went out in the Bucky (our vehicle) and searched for him. Luckily, Richard was able to find him and bring him home. Our loyal companion kitty was alive and well. He just doesn't follow me around in the house anymore.

Anyways, that's all for now. Until next time...