Close encounters of the elephant kind
3 september 2014 Credit: JEN BUTCHER Howard Butcher looks at the pile of dung in the Knysna forest where he had a close encounter with an elephant on Monday 3 september 2014 Credit: JEN BUTCHER Howard Butcher looks at the pile of dung in the Knysna forest where he had a close encounter with an elephant on Monday
Cape Town - Terrified and exhilarated in equal measure – those were the contrasting emotions of Howard Butcher when he came face-to-face with one of the few remaining elephants in Knysna forest earlier this week .
The elephant, a young adult cow that he thinks was probably pregnant, charged him and came to a stop only about 20m away. They eye-balled each other for “about 10 or 15 seconds, or maybe it was 20, I wasn’t counting”, before the animal seemed to calm a little, turned around and walked off “fairly briskly”, he told the Cape Argus.
“My first reaction was, ‘This is amazing!’ and then almost instantly I sh** myself, to be honest.”
Butcher, soon to turn 57 and who lives in Plettenberg Bay, explains that he wears several hats, including as a qualified field guide taking mostly foreign tourists on specialised bird-watching hikes into the Knysna forests, as a pilot flying sky-divers, and as music producer at a Knysna recording studio.
Trying to find out as much as possible about the Knysna elephants has been a longstanding interest, he says, and he was out on a familiar forest track on his vintage motorbike late on Monday afternoon, looking for fresh elephant dung, when the unexpected encounter – and his first ever sighting – occurred.
Writing about it on his Facebook page, he said the elephant was in fine condition with unbroken, even tusks of about 60cm.
“What a scary but wonderful experience it was. I will never forget that fleeting moment when she made the decision in favour of flight rather than fight.”
His interest is partly explained by family history: he came to South Africa, aged 11, from Kenya where his family helped establish the Wildlife Service, and his wife, Jen, is from the Harvey family who provided a refuge to the last 16 remaining elephants on their Eastern Cape farm before the proclamation of the Addo Elephant National Park. The farm was later incorporated into the Park.
Cape Argus