The elephant in the room

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Walt's US readers may be surprised to learn that the Canadians celebrate about six weeks before Americans. How so? Well, it could be that Canadians have less to be thankful for. Or, possibly, Canadians invented Thanksgiving. Who knows, eh?

One thing Canadians can be thankful for is that they are not troubled by wild elephants, as are residents of a part of the world where Walt and Agent 21 spent some years, an eternity ago.


Agent 21 sent along these pix of elephants marching through the lobby and grounds of Mfuwe Lodge in Zambia. Apparently the lodge was built on their migration trail, next to a mango grove that one family of elephants have always visited when the fruit ripens. When they returned one year and found the luxury accommodation in the way, they simply walked through the lobby to reach their beloved grove of trees.


The animals come in two-by-two. Hotel staff and visitors have gotten used to the elephants' impromptu strolls through the lobby. The family group, headed by matriarch "Wonky Tusk", return every November and stay for four to six weeks to gorge on mangos up to four times a day. Andy Hogg, 44, the lodge director, has lived in South Luangwa National Park since 1982. But in all his years of dealing with wild animals he has never seen such intimate interaction between humans and wild animals.

"This is the only place in the world where elephants freely get so close to humans," says Andy . "The elephants start coming through base camp in late November each year to eat the ripe mangos from our trees."

Mfuwe Lodge consists of seven camps and the base camp where the elephants walk through. Employing 150 staff, the management of the lodge report that there have been no incidents involving the wild elephants to date. "The elephants get reasonably close to the staff, as you can see in the pictures of the elephants near the reception area," Andy explains. "But we do not allow the guests to get that close."

Walt recalls staying at the Caribbea Bay Hotel & Casino Lodge in Kariba, Zimbabwe, where a similar phenomenon occurred every night around dusk. There, however, the "jumbos" (as the local people call them) didn't have to come through the lobby, but wandered through the parking lot directly into the gardens, to browse on the shrubbery, much to the consternation of the gardeners, who were prohibited by law from doing much more than yelling, "Shoo! Go `way! Bad elephants!"

Africa. It's not all poverty and famine. But it's not all elephants either. Some might say the solution to hunger would be to eat the elephants. People do.