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Another leigh favorite I would like to share. Vengeful Elephants The next day brought us once more to the top of the narrow ridge at Behungi.As we were walking along the backbone of the ridge,shortly before reaching the resthouses,and were walled in by bamboo on both sides,a disturbance in the thicket attracted our attention.We paused.Suddenly a man about fourty years old lurched out of the jungle into the trail.He was almost completely naked,covered with blood and dirt,and wildly distraught.He stood before us trembling,barely able to speak. We finally made out that he and a companion had been cutting bamboo about two hundred yards from the road,preparatory to building a hut.An elephant had charged them and killed his friend while he,knocked down amid a lot of broken bamboo,crawled under it and had miraculously escaped.Nobody would venture into the bamboo to make a try at recovering the dead mans body.Bill absolutely forbade any such attempt.he knew the danger better than us. We went on to the resthouse,and i was standing looking at the magnificent view-one of the finest in the world-while the boys put up the tents,when two natives,streaming with perspiration and frightened half to death,ran into camp,and dropped down panting.When they could speak they told us that they had been traveling with two companions along the trail at the foot of the bamboo ridges when elephants charged from the bamboo and killed the other two. Bill told me the elephants were unusually vicious here because the natives made a practice of stealing up on them and shooting them with poisoned arrows. The elephants technique of attack is first to fell his victim with a blow from his trunk.He then kneels and gores the prone form with his tusks,after which he macerates it with his front feet.Next he picks up what remains of his enemy and flings it seventy-five or a hundred feet away.Finally he walks around in a circle for perhaps two hours,watching to see if the victim stirs.If it does,he returns to gore it again.This last peculiarity of waiting to see if his victim is dead makes it dangerous to approach the body of an elephant kill until a good many hours have passed.Nothing but luck had prevented just such an attack on our party,when we traveled this same dangerous trail....... Hope you brothers enjoyed it! ![]() Be carefull out there!!! ![]() |
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