The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony

I was woken several hours later by one of the reserve’s rangers, shouting, ‘The elephants have gone! They’ve broken out!’ The two adult elephants had worked as a team to fell a tree, smashing it onto the electric fence and then charging out of the enclosure. “As I went to bed that night, I noticed the elephants lining up along the fence, facing out towards their former home. Then, with her family in tow, she strode the entire perimeter of the enclosure, pointing her trunk at the wire to check for vibrations from the electric current. The 8,000-volt charge sent a jolt shuddering through her bulk. “Nana gathered her clan, loped up to the fence and stretched out her “We had erected a giant enclosure within the reserve to keep them safe until they became calm enough to move out into the reserve proper. David, my head ranger, named him Mnumzane, which in Zulu means ‘Sir.’ We christened the matriarch Nana, and the second female-in-command, the most feisty, Frankie, after my wife. “His mother and baby sister had been shot before his eyes, and here he was, just a teenager, defending his herd. “He stared at us,” writes Anthony, “flared his ears and with a trumpet of rage, charged, pulling up just short of the fence in front of us. Last off was the 15-year-old son of the dead mother. We sedated them with a pole-sized syringe, and once they had calmed down, the door slid open and the matriarch emerged, followed by her baby bull, three females and an 11-year-old bull.”

“When they arrived, they were thumping the inside of the trailer like a gigantic drum. The French version of 'The Elephant Whisperer' According to his son Dylan, both arrived at the Anthony family compound shortly after Anthony’s death. There are two elephant herds at Thula Thula. He is the author of three books, Baghdad Ark, detailing his efforts to rescue the animals at Baghdad Zoo during the Iraqi war, the forthcoming The Last Rhinos, and his bestselling The Elephant Whisperer. Known for his unique ability to calm traumatized elephants, Anthony had become a legend. But how did they know he had died March 7? The formerly violent, rogue elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.”įor two days the herds loitered at Anthony’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu – to say good-bye to the man they loved.

For 12 hours, two herds of wild South African elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who saved their lives.

The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony