safarigeek

Elephant amusing themselves in Katavi

I was speaking to the guys from Nomad the other day and they were telling me about an interesting conundrum they’ve had to deal with recently.  One of the main attractions around Chada Camp is the elephant who regularly drift through camp hoovering up the seed pods from the various large shady trees that the camp is built under.

These  eles are usually polite and well behaved; they’ve been coming here for ever and the presence of the camp is of little interest to them. But recently they’ve been causing problems by tearing the canvas fly sheets of the Chada tents.  At first it was assumed this was an accident, although elephant are well known for their dexterity and often happily pick their way between guy ropes with no trouble, so it did seem unlikely.

A tailor was called for who meticulously sewed up the fly sheets. But sure enough, just a day or so later, it happened again.  This pattern was repeated several times, until the guilty elephant was caught – “red trunked”  – resting his tusks on the taught flysheet at the back of the tent and gently pushing down to rip the canvas. Clearly no accident, so what on earth was he up to?

The guys in camp went over and over this, but there seemed to be only one possible answer;  They like doing it.  And it seems as though  the noise that the ripping canvas makes is just too much to resist (bubble wrap anyone?)…  Seems like a reasonable explanation, but that left quite a challenge for the camp crew. There’s only so much sewing up that you can do.  So what is the solution?

This is where I think it gets particularly good: the solution they have come up with is to replace the torn sections of the flysheet with strips of canvas held in place with…wait for it…velcro.

Job done, the elephant still gets the very satisfying noise of the tearing velcro and it’s a simple job to patch up when they get bored.  I have a feeling this may not be the last installment of this story, but will keep you posted.