Poaching!

An excerpt from The Last Rhino (see following post)

She raised her trunk again and sniffed the air. Something was not quite right.  The scents of dust and acacia blossoms were normal, but there was something un-natural. She turned with ears flapping and smelled again.  She harumped a danger signal to her family. They moved smartly off into the brush. The matriarch faced the unknown. In her anxiety she pawed the ground and shook her massive head from side to side. Her big feet pushed up clouds of dust.  In an instant she saw, heard and smelled the source of danger. Trumpeting loudly, she charged, bashing through the acacia grove towards the blurs of blue.  All her instincts required that she do her duty. She must protect her family.  As she had done many times before, she would confront the danger - lions, buffalo or perhaps a stray rhino - and chase it away. Her size, the awesome spectacle of an irritated two-ton beast closing rapidly, usually worked.  But not this time.

Shots rang out. She was met with a burst of automatic weapon fire.  The noise and the smoke were terrifying.  She stumbled and fell but was shot yet again, this time from closer range. Bullets fired directly into her brain.  Her body convulsed and shuttered. She was dead.

Cries of triumph rose around the dead elephant as the shooters emerged from the trees.  Soon two of them manned axes to chop away the matriarch’s tusks.  They were not the great heavy tusks of a mature bull, but each would weigh about forty pounds - a quite respectable haul for the poachers.  They took nothing but the tusks, leaving the carcass to scavengers.  The butchers did their work quickly. They wanted to be safely gone before vultures signaled the murder.    

The fleeing herd of terrified elephants ran for miles before slowing.  They waited impatiently for their boss lady who never came.  The transition to new leadership was befuddling, but someone had to take charge. One of the older cows sensed it was now her job.  She led the group to water.