Thirsty young jumbo’s close call with croc

THIS young bull elephant got more than he bargained for when he ambled up to a waterhole to slake his thirst. Just moments after he dipped his trunk in the water, it was grabbed by a crocodile.

But luckily the croc had bitten off considerably more than he could chew – and the astonished elephant was able to whip his trunk out of the reptile’s jaws with no more than a few cuts to remember the encounter by.

The remarkable scene was captured by amateur wildlife photographer Ian Salisbury, 62, at the South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. Salisbury, general manager of a safari lodge, said: “One of our guests had seen a crocodile try a similar attack on another elephant earlier in the day so, camera in hand, I went to see if there might be a repeat performance.

“The action was so quick – a couple of seconds – and fortunately I had the camera pointing in the right direction. Having spent 30 years in the African bush, I realise how lucky I was to catch the scene.”

Salisbury said the elephant “fled rapidly into the bush” after the attack.

The incident has remarkable echoes of Rudyard Kipling’s children’s story, The Elephant’s Child, which tells how the animals got their trunks after a crocodile grabbed a baby elephant’s nose and kept pulling it until it stretched. – Mail On Sunday