Ellies

Elephants!!!! While driving around Kruger, we decided to stop for a break to stretch our legs and go to the bathroom (you can't get out of your cars while driving around, but they do have sporadic rest areas every couple of hours that have some facilities). When we arrived at the rest area it was very crowded and there were no parking spaces, so our client's husband (who was driving) pulled very close next to a tree and brushed up against it. When he did so I noticed that the very top branches were moving, and I thought it was strange that the car could have swayed the branches at the top, but I shook it off and got out of the car. So the 7 of us are all just milling around the car, stretching, talking about what we had seen on the drive, when ---- helllloooooo?????? OMG there is an ellie (do you like the slang I picked up) right in the tree that we basically drove into. It was crazy -- we didn't even know he was there! It was a lone male, best guess by others smarter than me was 15 - 20 years old, but alone, and single males tend to be quite aggressive. We're all standing around taking pictures, when we realize that maybe it's not such a good idea to be so close. So everyone starts to back away and as we are moving back I'm talking with Mark (our client's husband) about the elephant, how amazing it is, etc., and I start filming him (the elephant, not Mark). You can see in the video if you watch to the end how very close we are, when suddenly the ellie starts moving towards us. I started to get a bit nervous and turned to Mark to say maybe we should move further back when ---- oopsies : ) it turns out that everyone else took "moving back" to mean waaaaaay back --- they were like 30 feet away, and only Mark and I were left less than 10 feet away basically holding hands with him. I was so busy filming and taking pictures I hadn't realized that everyone else had left. And, Mark is crouching behind the car watching it it while I'm just out in the open in my own world, in complete awe. You have to watch the video to see how close we are, and you start to see him moving towards us. Ooooopsies, got a little too close : ) The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.