The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

On that fateful afternoon, with no visitors present, Thuman opened the outside door, took Gunda by the left ear, and with his steel- shod elephant hook in his left hand started to lead the huge animal out into his yard. Just inside the doorway Gunda thought he saw his chance, and he took it. With a fierce sidewise thrust of his head he struck his keeper squarely on the shoulder and sent him plunging to the floor in the stall corner nearest him. Then, instantly he wheeled about and started to follow up his attack. In the fall Thuman's hook flew from his hand. At first Gunda tried to step on him, but he lay so close into the corner that the elephant could not plant his feet so that they would do execution. Then he tried to kneel upon the keeper, with the same result. Thuman struggled more closely into the corner, and tried hard to pull himself into the refuse box, through its low door; but with his trunk Gunda caught him by a leg and dragged him back. Then he made a fierce downward thrust with his tusks, which were nearly four feet long, to transfix his intended victim. His left tusk struck the steel-clad wall and shattered into fragments, half way up. The resounding crash of that breaking tusk was what saved Thuman's life. Gunda thrust again and again with his sound tusk, with the terrified and despairing keeper trying to cling to the broken tusk and save himself. At last the point of the sound tusk drove full and fair through the flat of Thuman's left thigh, as he lay, and stopped against the concrete floor.