Elephant Feeding – Botlierskopf, South Africa

The elephant feeding is one of the activities offered at Botlierskopf, a private game reserve located on the “Garden Route” in South Africa. Here the elephant encounter is one of many daily events on offer. The game reserve lays hidden away in beautiful green surroundings, and, like many of these private game resorts, it has a flair of exclusiveness about it. The restaurant and reception facilities are tastefully designed, using high quality natural materials, such as solid wood and leather, and mixing it with modern furniture. The dining tables have white linen and silverware. There are high ceilings and wide terraces. The staff – mostly colored and blacks – are pleasant and gracious. All is calm, quiet and beautiful. All is good.

There are two different main areas, as there are separate facilities for day visitors and for those staying overnight.

You cannot enter the overnight visitor complex without being checked in at the lodge or being the guest of someone who is. I was excited as well as pretty relaxed about the thought of feeding elephants, having been through a number of other organized animal encounter events before (including petting a tiger, feeding kangaroos, being dragged along on the back of a

dolphin, cuddling a wombat, etc.) and having found them all greatly enjoyable. There is certainly something unique about touching wild animals, having this skin-to-skin contact with exotic creatures, and I was just thoroughly looking forward to it.

A driver in an open jeep came to pick me up and greets me, and without much further ado, I am told to climb in, and off we go. The only other participant for today’s feeding, is an overnight visitor at the reserve already seated in the jeep. He is a man in his fifties, slim, tall, dark, living in Cape Town and working at an art gallery as curator, it turns out. After a short five minutes on a bumpy dirt track, we arrive at the elephant enclosure. There we were met by an elephant trainer and his assistant. We are close to a small river, on a grassy meadow in between a few large trees. The enclosure is all very natural, just a small wooden fence to mark off the enclosure. There is a large daddy elephant, a mother and a small baby elephant. The mother is kept a bit in the back, 15 meters or so. We are told that she is a bit moody, hence kept aside and will not take part in the feeding. But they let her be right there so that she can keep an eye on her baby. We are told that as long as she can be close by and otherwise will be left in peace, the elephant mom will be happy.

However, the huge daddy elephant and the baby are right there. They appear ready and happy to have strangers’ hands feed them chunks of apples. There are two large buckets on the ground, all prepared and packed full with apples cut in two or four. The guide spends a few minutes on an introduction, telling us a bit about where these elephants originate from, what kind they are, their names and a few other such facts. It feels right to get some information about them – it’s a bit like being introduced to a friend’s friend as one is about to sit down for a nice lunch together. But by the end of the introduction I am still confused about the distinction between African and Asian elephants, but not quite in my usual frame of mind of asking questions about facts and figures, as I am more interested in finding out what we actually will be doing and to just get started. After the brief introduction the guide moves on to demonstrate the two options we have for feeding the elephant. The one method being:

stretching out your arm and offering the apple by having it rest in an open palm, letting the elephant use its trunk to pick it up and then the elephant will itself put it into its mouth. The other alternative is to have the elephant open its mouth and stick one arm into the big hole of a mouth. To do this you have to stick your arm right into that big wet pink hole, and place the apple down on that huge soft pillow of a tongue, and then swiftly remove your hand.

Soon enough I was standing there with an apple in hand, while the guide amiably urged me to

“place it right in there”. The daddy elephant was huge and imposing up front. You did indeed feel an instinctive urge to take a step back, rather than towards him, when it opened its mouth.

However, I seem to come with the general disposition to be moved more by such a moment’s happy excitement than fear, so I swiftly went ahead. It was all quickly done, and the apple was quickly gone. After a few repetitions I managed to stop holding my breath, and could better take in the share size of the animal as well, and how everything inside that mouth appeared to be roaming around all the time. I noted that it felt like I was feeding the elephant colorful M&M candy rather than colorful apples, as the apples’ size in that mouth amounted to very little. Furthermore, I noted when I was feeding by letting him pick the apple up

appeared to be, how rough, hard and thick the skin was on the trunk and so on. Soon, the most noted factor, however, was how much salvia there is in an elephant’s mouth, and how very sticky and messy it all gets. I was soon feeling wet up to my elbows and wishing for a towel, or some paper napkins at least. However, no such niceties were available. I did resort to attempting to clean off my hands on the grassy ground, but mostly just had to let it dry on my hands and trying not to notice it.

When my fellow participant was going to have his first try on the feeding, a few minutes after I had started off, he was somewhat hesitant, but it all went all right. There were plenty of apples and just the two of us, so we really could feed until our hearts were content. After spending about ten minutes on big daddy, the little baby elephant was brought to the front.

The baby was only around 120 cm tall, and did of course appear harmless and only cute, now that we had already tackled the feeding of his big daddy. To the extent that one now could be confident enough for a bit of testing and trying and fooling around. Hence, I started trying to hold on to the apple chunk as the baby elephant grabbed and pulled it with its trunk. This little bit of “tug of war” activity I thought was great fun, and it allowed me to get a sense of how surprisingly strong even the baby elephant’s trunk was.