Elephants on the Wall (Part 1)

July 15 2024

For the Love of an Elephant - by Cathy Buckle "Letter from Zimbabwe" 8th August 2024

An elephant with a very swollen lower leg was standing in the hot, dry bush. Something was wrong, its foot was big and the skin peeling and Kelly watched for a few minutes, took photographs and then phoned Blake Muil. Blake, heading the Rukuru Conservation Unit, went into action immediately; after 30 years of living in the bush and working in the wildlife business, he knew time was critical.

From the pictures it looked like there were two snares on the elephant’s lower leg. They had probably been set near a waterhole where poachers set lines of as many as 100 snares attached to trees all around the water with thorn branches placed in between leaving animals no way to get to the water without getting caught.

The young elephant bull was on the boundary of Rukuru and another property in the Zambezi Valley and these cable snares had probably been on its leg for about two months, gradually going deeper and deeper into its flesh and eventually cutting off the blood supply to the elephant’s foot. Blake knew that intervention was needed urgently before this young bull would lose its foot.

Blake went immediately to the National Parks offices in Marongora to ask for help. A team of Scouts would be taken to the last known location of the elephant and they would start tracking from there. The young bull probably wouldn’t have gone too far with its limited mobility on a painful and very swollen leg. Checking water sources first, the Scouts soon picked up the elephant’s track in the soft sand; it wasn’t hard identifying the spoor which was scuffed and dragged. A few days after it had first been seen, the elephant was located by the tracking team and by then the National Parks head Vet was also available.

The young elephant was darted and the veterinary team got straight to work. There were two snares on the elephant’s back leg, deeply embedded in the flesh above its foot. Two big incisions were made and the wire cable snares exposed. The twisted wires were carefully cut and extracted and the wounds cleaned and sterilized. Antibiotics were injected, the wounds closed and packed and then it was time to administer the reversal drug.

The vet slipped the needle into one of the pronounced blood vessels in the back of the elephant’s ear and told everyone to start moving away. From a safe distance they watched and waited. For the love of an elephant had they all managed to save this young bull? This now was the critical moment. Would the elephant make it? The adrenalin was palpable. “How many minutes,” the vet called out? Someone answered. The tension was thick in the air, the seconds ticked past and they waited to see if the elephant would come round.

The first sign was a puff of dust as the elephant exhaled, its trunk lying flat on the ground. Then another puff of dust. The elephant’s head came up and flopped back down. Its trunk came up, slowly the elephant rocked itself and managed to sit up.

“Excellent,” the vet whispered. “So our boy is waking up nicely after about three or four minutes,” he said. “Up, up, up my boy,” he said, tenderness and emotion clear in his voice. The elephant struggled up onto its feet and there was an audible sigh of relief, a little nervous laughter, whispered chatter. “Well done guys,” the National Park’s head Vet said, “well done, well done.” Everyone shook hands; fantastic teamwork from everyone involved had saved this young elephant bull.

Wonderful work like this needs all our support. Support for transport and fuel, for food and allowances for the trackers; for the vet and the drugs he needs for darting and treatment and then of course for the follow-up monitoring in the weeks to come by Blake and his team and then for the next animal and the next.

This wonderful story from Zimbabwe highlights the fantastic response from National Parks: professional, dedicated and efficient. Blake Muil and the Rukuru Conservation Unit and their helpers need support to continue this critical work for the future of our Zimbabwe; they are there, out of the spotlight, boots on the ground, day after day, saving the wilderness for us and the generations yet to come. Please click this link to support this amazing work. https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2TNMPJHYHN948

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If you would like to read more about Cathy’s work, please visit her website or subscribe to her letters. There is no charge for the emails “Letter From Zimbabwe” but donations are welcome: https://cathybuckle.co.zw/

The call of the unknown

It had been a long and painful chapter, but eventually I reached a point where I knew I had to find a new life, a new direction.

After my long-term partner – the person I had believed was my soul mate (or so I thought) – decided that his life needed more excitement and began seeking attention elsewhere and told me everything with disarming honesty. That was the final blow. I kicked him out of our shared home from one day to the next. He left, scrambling for a temporary place to stay, and just like that, our seven-year relationship collapsed. The infamous seven-year mark.

We had lived intensely. We had travelled widely and wildly, surviving foreign places, remote wildernesses, and moments where we depended on each other completely. We backpacked through Southeast Asia, bought a dusty old car to roam the wild Australian outback, and pedalled through New Zealand’s green, rolling hills – our bicycles loaded with everything we could need for the adventure: camping gear, spare bike parts, groceries and even a Chinese wok to cook over an open fire.

Experiences like that should bond two people for life – at least that’s what I believed. But in the end, even all of that wasn’t enough to hold us together. I guess, returning to a predictable, structured life crushed him. Routine drained him, while adventure had fed him. So he reinvented himself into a version of life he found thrilling – sun, wind, sport, and a crowd of admirers. And with that new life came the attention of women who found him irresistible. It didn’t take long before I was replaced. Then replaced again. And again.

The hole I fell into each time got darker, deeper, harder to climb out of. All the dreams I’d carried – marriage, children, a future together – shattered. On top of that, my job in a development laboratory gave me no joy. It was demanding with little meaningfulness.
I was miserable, down, broken, just functioning. That whole cycle lasted two years.

My favourite aunty, my closest confidante, finally told me, “Get out of the mud.” She meant it literally and figuratively. Only I could pull myself out. No friend, no family member could drag me up unless I reached out my own hand. And I wasn’t. I had become attached to the misery. It was familiar. Almost comforting. Changing meant stepping into the unknown, and the body resists that – it clings to the emotional habits it knows. To break that pattern takes willingness. Awareness.

And maybe a hint from the universe.

My hint came quietly, from the enlarged photograph of African elephant on my bedroom wall – a gift from that same aunty, whose intuition was always uncannily spot-on.  Five massive bull elephants, each over five tons, walked across a dusty savanna, following one another along a well-trodden elephant path – possibly an ancient route used by generations of ellies. These beautiful creatures, framed and bound to my wall, were very large African bulls, not tamed elephant, not circus elephant, definitely wild African elephant, all bulls. I would often glimpse at the image and wonder… how on earth was that photograph taken? How did the photographer manage to get so close to these wild giants? I must mention that this was long before Go-pro’s and drone cameras even existed.

In my gloom, I had completely ignored it, but one morning, that image spoke to something deep within me.  
A nudge. A reminder. A direction.  

I knew I had to take the first step. This was my life, and I was wasting it. I realised that if you don’t reach out for help, no one can grab your hand. Life is that simple. You receive only when you ask.
So I made the decision to move on. I turned my attention to a new future and found comfort in having the home to myself. The four walls no longer threatened to crush me; instead, they opened up, and the idea of seeking “new pastures” began to excite me. As joy slowly returned, new thoughts and possibilities entered my mind. I felt alert, expectant – a quiet readiness for the universe to show me the way.

And it did. There, on the wall, were the elephants, calling to me every morning. In fact, I think they had been shouting all along – urging me to return to Africa, to the land where elephants walk.

How had I ignored them all this time, when they had been there – right in front of my eyes?

I made a decision. I was going back to my elephants.

Read the second part of my story, to follow how my life unfolded – and the incredible truth I discovered upon returning to my elephants.
A journey of realisation that went far deeper than I could have imagined.