Book 21: Streets Paved with Gold

Two arrogant young men leading your African Safari. What could possibly go wrong? Don and Carl think they know everything there is to know about animals and animal behaviour. They have coped with dangerous situations before, countless times, in fact. They believe they can handle anything the wild can throw at them. Relax; you will be quite safe in their hands. Carl boasts that has pulled the hairs out of an elephant’s tail while Don catches black mambas to sell to herpetologists. They are confident to the point of over confidence. You can’t teach them anything about the wild and they probably wouldn’t listen to you anyway. As a foreigner and a city person, how could you expect to know more than them about the African bush?

Don and Carl have lined up two Norwegian girls for a trip to a remote game reserve. One of the girls cries off with a cold, so the other girl brings her boyfriend along. What a disappointment for our two macho men. On the first day in the game reserve, the foursome encounters something strange. A tree blocks the main road through the reserve, put there by an elephant. The game warden tells them that he removed the tree earlier during the day, but the elephant insists on putting it back again. It is almost as if the elephant is playing tricks on the tourists. An elephant with a sense of humour? Or, could it be that the elephant is actually trying to trap the tourists: a rogue with a grudge against humans?