Just six weeks back Ellen and Dia and I stopped on a sand track along the Chobe river, shut off the engine our Toyota pickup truck and watched as a herd of elephants twice the size of our vehicle passed quietly to our right. It was a scene that will remain forever in my memory, as the creatures who are literally mammoth in size lumbered past us. Only a few of the males bothered to look up, turning their trunks and giant heads toward, eyeing us to make sure we knew they were there.
They left us to sit there undisturbed, to marvel at their massive, mobile beauty, to enjoy their family outing. At one point, later in the day, I counted 74 elephants crossing in front of us.
We knew that a momentary burst of cruelty, or fear - or anything really - on their part could kill the three of us. These African bush elephants weigh as much as six tons each, and there were dozens of them.
But there in the Chobe National Park in northern Botswana, hunting is banned, poaching is contained by police action, and the elephants, accustomed to visitors with binoculars, left us alone.
Two days ago we learned from a friend in Botswana that more than two dozen of the elephants on the Chobe had been killed by raiding poachers. The invaders, most likely from across the river in Namibia, cut the faces from the grass eating elephants, who flock to the Chobe by the hundreds in search of water. They cut off their trucks and amputated their tusks, which are like gold in some markets.
In an instant, Chobe, the sole safe and wild sanctuary for wildlife in southern Africa, was violated and changed forever.
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