It was late afternoon in the Central African jungle. Two Gabonese guides and myself weaved our way through the leafy wilderness. The forest, which, during the peak daylight hours sounds as if it’s rushing towards a dramatic crescendo, had hushed itself into a sort of serene lullaby. The only sounds were the crunching of dried leaves underfoot and the hypnotic humming of insects all around us. Not even a parrot squawked.

And we hiked forward towards our camp. After a long day of counting animals and collecting data we were ready for our sleeping pads. My hands rested on the straps of my rucksack, my feet flopped continuously forward and my mind drifted ever further away. There’s something so comforting, so cozy about the forest at that time of day – as if one were tucked up on the couch with a duvet.

Then, without any type of prior warning, that day-dreamy duvet was ripped right off me by the sound of an elephant’s trumpet only a few meters away. It tore through the surrounding forest, and me, like a machine gun. In the split second that I had to look at the gigantic bull as he charged towards us I could appreciate how magnificent he was with his huge ears and his protruding tusks. I could also appreciate how squished I would be if I didn’t move quickly.

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Adrenaline surged through every cell in my body like air escaping from a burst balloon. I turned in my wellies and ran like I’d never run before! The forest either side of me stretched into a continuous, green blur. Behind me I could hear the elephant approaching, like an on-coming train, as it crushed everything in its path. I could see the guides bounding ahead, clearly having decided it was every man/woman for themselves.

Yet, the whole episode seemed to happen in slow motion. In the time that it took me to make each stride I felt every day of my life swoosh past my shoulders. I could remember bottle-feeding lambs bigger than myself, slaving over essays for my Leaving Cert., walking down Harcourt St. in the early hours of the morning, holding my nephew for the first time – all of everything, all at once. I wasn’t thinking about the elephant in the room as it careered towards me.

And eventually, after roughly 200 meters or so, that elephant ran out of steam. He retreated into the depths of the jungle just as swiftly as he’d appeared. We stopped to catch our breath. My heart felt as if it was trying to beat its way out of my chest, my limbs had the consistency of jelly and my lungs were ready to burst. The guides were in shock too.

In an earlier piece I wrote about a different elephant encounter in which I ‘straddled the line between fear and excitement’. On this occasion, however, there was no straddling involved. Instead I plunged unequivocally over onto the side of fear. I had hoped that moving to Africa would be a mind-opening experience, but having my skull crushed by an elephant was not what I had envisaged! Thankfully though I’ve lived to tell the tale.

The photo which accompanies this piece was not snapped by me. That honor goes to my friend and fellow researcher Keary Missler who encountered another elephant on the Ivindo River. Clearly it was a more easygoing individual than the one I came across!