This photo was clearer before I put it on the blog, but blogger makes them smaller so it is difficult to make the elephant out - if you click on the photo to enlarge it though, you should be able to just make out a row of 5 elephants walking .jpg)
A grainy photo as we could not get too close to them - but here you can just make out 2 of the 5 elephants seen on our farm last week (you can click the photo to enlarge it)The other day on the way to school, we passed a few giraffe crossing one of the farm roads. Of course as luck would have it, I didn't have my camera with me at the time, so I couldn't record it. I commented to my daughter that she should count herself lucky, as not many children can say that they have to stop to let giraffe pass on their way to school in the morning, as she thinks that things like this are pretty normal and happen to everyone, as it's all she's ever known !
We also have a small group of elephant (never less than 5 or more than 10) which regularly visit the farm (at 3500 acres our farm is not fenced at all), in fact they cause chaos during the bean season as they love eating the bean crops ! (I secretly enjoy the fact that the elephant's eat our beans and return year after year at the same time to graze on them - and always point out to my husband that surely we can afford to lose a few acres of beans to support East African wildlife !)
Anyway, these Elephant are regular farm visitors (they wander through from Kenya) but of course I never have my camera with me when I see them so have not been able to 'catch' them yet. "Oh look !" my husband will say "The Ellies are back again, you should write about them on your blog" well of course I wanted to, but felt that I should back the blog post up with photo's ... which I didn't have up until last week .... so here, finally is the post !
On our way back from town last week, we saw them on the lower portion of the farm. A small family group of 5. They are very scared of cars, so we could not get too close (they have been poached in the past although poaching is illegal nowadays but of course some of these elephants are very old - they live up to 60 years - and as the old saying goes, an elephant never forgets). Also, our roads are quite wet at the moment so we did not want to get stuck with elephant approaching - they have been known to trample and overturn cars here, and kill people on foot. So, hence the somewhat hazy and faraway pictures - but at least you can get the general idea !
The Hippopotamus is Africa's most dangerous animal and responsible for the most deaths here each year, but the one animal which I really fear - and have a great respect for - is the elephant. Fully mature bull elephants reach an average height of just over 3 metres and weigh around 5000 kg's. Elephants have an excellent sense of hearing and smell, although their sight is not that great. They are extremely intelligent animals and are thought to communicate with each other over great distances with a sound which cannot be heard by the human ear (much like whales do) which has been called a 'secret language' and it is a well known fact here that Elephant mourn their dead much as we as human's do, hovering over their deceased loved ones and sometimes even covering them with branches etc. They are truly amazing animals and I count myself lucky that they are frequent visitors to our farm - despite my husband complaining about the amount of beans a single elephant can eat in one night !
