Several months ago, I was privileged to watch two elephants--one a large bull or female, the other about 2/3 of the first one's size. I was amazed at what I saw and was plesed that at least one other person, Afke, was watching at the same time. No one caught it on a video thoughI suspect its captured in the NGS archives somewhere. Here's what I wrote about that night:
A Sense of Style
This was not Fred Astaire and Ginger
Rogers.
They had less grace,
less sense of style:
two elephants, one
large, the other small—
not a baby, maybe two
thirds the other’s size—
wheeled in circles for
a while, their trunks
stroked each other’s sides and heads and
intertwined just once.
An act of love?
Or an act of art? They circled to the
right,
clockwise, nimble footwork for their
weight.
And after a minute, maybe two, they
stopped
the dance and walked together into the
night.
Two elephants in the African night, danced
to some rhythm we cannot know, acted
out some urge they graced us with the
chance
to see, some ancient rite, instinctive
perhaps—
some ritual played out
in the dark night.
--Palmer