Sometimes you have an itch you just have to scratch – but in this elephant’s case, on a nearby parked Volkswagen CAR.
Luckily for the two people inside the car at the time, he didn’t end
up crushing them but it did cause a lot of damage to the car: all of the
windows were crushed, the roof was smashed, all four tires were popped
and the chassis was broken.
Armand Grobler, 21, who captured the moment in photographs, told UK
Mirror “We were unsure of what to do in the situation when the elephant
made contact with the car, and when the car was being crushed, we feared
for the lives of the driver and passenger, but our efforts were very
limited as to what we could do,”
Fortunately, the male and female occupants were unharmed but, understandably, very shaken.
“They were both in shock but happy to be alive,” Grobler told the Mirror.
Elephants use trees or rocks to scratch an itch they can’t reach with
their trunks, but that might not have been the only reason for its
behavior with the car.
“The elephant was presumably on musth, which is a time that an
elephant male has an excess amount of testosterone, turning even the
calmest Dumbo into a raging bull,” Grobler told the Mirror. “Yet even
though it was in this condition, it displayed no signs of aggression or
frustration and was in a more playful mood.”
As for the elephant, after giving itself a good scratch, it continued
on it’s way itch free – oblivious to the destruction it had left
behind.