Dumbo Porn

Things got a little awkward in the back of our safari jeep on Tuesday at Minneriya National Park, which is located about 40 mins drive from our guesthouse in Sigiriya.

There we were, minding our business, gawking and snapping endless photos of a magnificent herd of 50-60 wild elephants grazing on the grass of the open plains in front of us… I was observing the mannerisms of a particularly adorable baby elephant who was being trunk-fed grass from his Mumma elephant when a nearby medium sized male elephant (no doubt a teenager, judging by his actions) saw an opportunity to get some camera-time and mounted a unsuspecting female elephant from behind. My jaw dropped and I called the attention of the rest of our group, and we all laughed awkwardly but couldn’t tear our eyes away… How often do people get to see this on the tour? Surely it’s not part of the ticket price normally. The poor female elephant couldn’t do much more than let him keep attempting what he set out to do – there’s not much room to move or resist when a stronger, hornier male elephant mounts you with both of his big thick legs thrown over your back as he focuses on hitting the target (which he didn’t manage to do, poor guy).  I wanted to jokingly shout “not in front of the kids!!” but perhaps elephants don’t have the same rules as humans – and judging by the number of baby elephants in this particular herd it didn’t seem to hinder their reproduction rates having to watch live sex shows like this one at such a young age. Brett managed to snap a couple of quick photos before Mr Horny Teenage Dumbo gave up and resumed eating grass. Today was not his day, evidentially. Mrs “Not Interested” Female elephant didn’t seem too concerned either way, and barely responded when he finally got off and called it quits – neither did the rest of the herd. Business as usual!

The rest of the safari tour was less exciting… Well, actually, that’s not really true.. Towards the end of the tour we were stalked by a gang of boisterous medium-sized male elephants, led by a much bigger male elephant… They seriously looked like a gang of boys cruising the streets looking for trouble. Two of the adolescent males were sparring, charging each other and playfully whacking each other with their trunks, like brothers chasing each other around the field, having sword-fights with their trunks. When they grew tired of shoving each other, they turned their attention to our jeep and took turns chasing us away when we got too close, and then the older male elephant would scold them and push them away – It reminded me of a scene outside of a nightclub at the end of a night on the town: drunken boys chasing after an enemy looking for a fight, his friends pulling him back saying “Leave it man, it’s not worth it” – the elephant world doesnt seem too different from ours in some ways – boys will be boys. Our jeep driver didn’t find it as amusing, and floored it whenever an elephant started charging… Thankfully so. I’ve seen the damage a charging elephant can do, and I know we’d come off second best if they did manage to catch up to us!

Sex shows and getting charged by angry male elephants aside, we had a great time at Minneriya National Park and were fortunate enough to see about 150 wild elephants, as well as many water buffalo, wild peacocks, birds and assorted wildlife before the sun set on another glorious day in Sri Lanka… The elephants were easily my favourite creatures which we saw. In particular the baby elephants – some of them were so tiny and judging by their coloring they couldn’t have been much more than a month old – so adorable.

It’s so nice to see them roaming around in the wild, with so much space to live their life as they usually would.. Well, apart from the nosy tourists disrupting their peace by snapping photos of them from the tops of Jeeps of course.