Word: oberjohann
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...elephant in captivity, says Heinrich Oberjohann, is a pious fraud-a nine-foot canting hypocrite that gives the human public what it wants while privately laughing up its trunk at the hairless little apes. Only in the wilds of Asia and, better still, of Africa, can elephant nature be seen in the raw; and then usually only by other elephants, for the largest of land animals is also one of the more elusive...
...Heinrich Oberjohann is a bring-'em-back-alive man, and he probably knows as much about elephants in the raw as anybody living. In the '30s, Animal Trader Carlo Hagenbeck sent him out to kidnap a few calves from the great herds which still roam the noxious swamps around Lake Chad, in North Central Africa. He lived for four years within scent of elephants -"I became an elephant myself." In Komoonl (Berberi dialect for elephant) he tells what it was like. Author Oberjohann is no scientist; some of his conclusions about the big animals will strain the faith...
Mothers Do Not Desert. Hunter Oberjohann traveled light. He slept beneath the sky on grass mat and saddle, ate only once a day, native style. To keep off mosquitoes, he often lived in a swath of thick toweling. All the while, day & night, he followed the herds through the stinking swamps, disdaining snakes, crocs and insects in his passion for pachyderms...
...Oberjohann made his first capture when a cow elephant charged him in swamp water. She turned aside when his native boy screamed, and charged the boy instead. The boy ducked under water. So did Oberjohann, and the cow ran off. Her baby, left behind, accepted Oberjohann's rope, and off they went, on the double, toward dry land. Oberjohann, knowing that mother elephants do not desert their children, waited for trouble...
...that night the baby elephant stood tethered while Oberjohann sat in a giant acacia tree, to wait for the mother's attack and watch the proceedings. At 2 a.m., "the night turned into a roaring, crashing hell." The acacia tree was torn from its roots, and Oberjohann was hurled 15 feet into some thorn bushes. In a few minutes, he says, the mother smashed 14 acacias and some 50 other trees, trampling them almost level with the ground...