Night watch with the ellies

Hi everyone!
Last night every volunteer had to spend one hour in the boma watching the ellies.
I had the shift from 10:30 to 11:30 p.m.
I got lucky since most of the action last night took place while I was sitting on my own on the first floor of the boma overlooking the pens where the elephants sleep. Here is the picture of the boma when the lights are on.

Boma

 

Since it was later in the evening I only had dimmed lights upstairs and the torch which I had to use every 5 minutes to see what the ellies were doing and note it down on a sheet. Almost all ellies were asleep, some standing and some lying on the ground. Suddenly I heard some noise against the metal bars, such as big elephant bodies rubbing themselves against metal-kind of sound. Then out of nowhere I heard a really loud trumpeting. I startled because in the boma, it echoes quite well! I turned on the torch and saw that Shaka and Sally, both third pen from the front, were awake and Shaka was standing on the far side of his pen on the left and Sally was doing the same on the right. It looked like both had some argument again - which is nothing new by the way!!!!
Then I turned off the torch and wrote down something like "loud trumpeting" on the sheet since we have to monitor the behaviour of the elephants in detail.
Suddenly I heard Clyde playing with the chain around its gate. So I wrote down "Clyde playing with chains". A few minutes later as the lights were still off I hear a loud noise like "wham-bam-crash". I turned on the torch again and saw that Clyde had broken the rope holding the bucket above his head, a bucket which is filled with goodies twice a week. Then he used his trunk to smash the bucket again the nearby door and made incredibly loud noises. Poor Mashudu who is sleeping in the first pen on the left got a "rude awakening" and looked completely bewildered as he tried to get on his feet. What a scene!
So far the night had been quiet with long and slow breathing of sleeping ellies, the loud cracking of ellies munching on branches and the very recurrent farting of one of the big grey bodies - at least once every 5 minutes!!!
But you know what? I just loved it!