Tag: Elephants

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Thembi, Uncategorized

Thembi

Posted on by Cheryl Merrill

An excerpt from my book:

With a low throaty rumble MmmmRRRRRrrrrrr, his own elephant greeting, Doug slips under Thembi’s jaw and stands by her side.  He reaches up and strokes the skin just in front of her ear.

“Steady, Thembi,” he says, “you’re a pretty girl, aren’t you Thembi?”  He pronounces her

Doug & Thembi

name “Tem-bee.”

She nods Yes.  Later I will learn Thembi always nods Yes at the word “pretty.”  But she is a beautiful elephant, all her proportions flawless.  And Thembi knows she is pretty.  She holds herself perfectly still in half-profile, the way beautiful women do all over the world when under regard by an admiring eye.

But her pose does not last long.  She turns her attention to a pile of mopane branches.  She picks up a single branch, strips its bark and stuffs the curled peelings into her mouth.  Thembi is after the sweet, green inner bark of the smaller branches.  Dessert first, the main course later.

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Jabu, Travel

Jabu

Posted on by Cheryl Merrill

An excerpt from my book:

There is nothing like him on earth.  His head alone is more immense than an entire gorilla.  Jabu is one hundred times larger than I am.  His trunk is larger than I am.  A single leg is larger than I am.  He fills my entire range of vision.

He reaches out with his trunk and rests it on the ground in front of my boots.  The tip of it lifts, opens, inhales my scent.

Jabu & Sandi

Do you recognize her, Jabu?” Sandi asks him.  Gently he swings his trunk to tap lightly against Sandi’s shoulder bag.

What’s in there?” I ask.

Sandi shows me a little mound of pellets cupped in her hand.  “Pressed alfalfa, wheat bran, salt, ground corn and sunflower hulls.”  Elephant candy, immediately vacuumed into Jabu’s trunk and transferred to his mouth.

Jabu turns his head toward me.  And You?

I hold out empty hands.  His trunk hovers over them for less than a second and then drops down to rest near my feet.  As I run my fingers along his warm tusk he snorts out a huge exhale, CHUFFFFFffffffff.

Posted in Africa, Doug, Elephants, Jabu, Sandi, Thembi, Writing

The Elephants Who Accepted Me as Part of Their Herd

Posted on by Cheryl Merrill

An excerpt from my book:

Jabu, Morula and Thembi live in Botswana’s Okavango Delta.  I don’t need radio collars or binoculars or even 4-wheel drive vehicles to study them.  They are companions, who allow me to walk alongside them, close as an eyelash.  Adopted as orphans from culling operations by Doug and Sandi Groves, they spend their days as most wild elephants do: strolling and eating.  But they are also willing ambassadors between the elephant world and the human world.

Walk with me.  Stroll with three unfettered and unfenced elephants in a world where the thin-skinned sky is a bare reminder that the earth is covered with air, where clouds stampede as if chased by lions – a world  without asphalt, without cell phones, without that strange human notion of time.

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Jabu & me