Elephant fences – thick electrical wires running about 5 feet off the ground – are supposed to keep the elephants out. At least that’s the theory. Our property is surrounded by an elephant fence.
Jane standing in the garden area next to the tree the elephant pushed over.
Tuesday night about 8 pm Rehema knocked on the door and hurriedly entered. “There’s an elephant in the yard,” she said looking flustered, her dinner of rice and stewed chicken in one hand, a weak cell-phone flashlight in the other. “It’s big and I’m afraid to go to my room.” An elephant in the yard! We’d been waiting for this. We grabbed our ultra-bright, heavy duty, REI torch and went outside. No elephant. He’d moved off the lawn at the sign of action. I used the beam of my flashlight to survey the surrounding bushes. There he was behind some bushes down the hill about 100 feet, his eye-shine an eerie yellowish green glow in the dark. We escorted the girls across the lawn and returned to the house. Smart people do not try to creep up on elephants in the dark (or any time for that matter).
The next morning in our scan off the deck, there was an elephant on the hill opposite the house (and a pair of rhinos and a giraffe). Ah ha, the culprit. Then we saw another elephant and another. Lots of elephants were inside the fence. Fourteen to be exact. They have learned to combat crawl under the fences to get to the trees on the other side (now that is something we’d like to see).
Then Jane entered the house looking as flustered as Rehema the night before. “The elephant has pushed down the tree into the garden and stepped everywhere,” she informed us, her hands on her hips. Once again we all trooped out across the lawn. There was the toppled tree by the garden, its thorny branches covering the lowest terrace, and big round elephant footprints everywhere. Out came the machetes and John, Jane and Kithati (a Lewa caretaker who lives in the same building as Rehema) chopped it up. We have a new appreciation for a machete’s usefulness.
Kithati and Jane using ponga (machetes) to cut and remove the tree.
Elephants are not supposed to be on this side of the fences, particularly not 14 of them. In the evening Lewa sent out a troop of animal chasers in vehicles and motorcycles. Very quickly, with the help of gunshots fired into the air, the elephants where back on the other side of the fence. Peace has returned to this side of the valley.
Here is one of the elephants that was inside our fence. It was across the valley along with a Rhino.
How is the fence powered when the generator is off?
And we complaine when the neighbors cat digs in our garden and leaves us a “present” 🙂
Who is Rehema? What is her job? Tell me a little about her. and Kethiti too.