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Circus elephant won’t forget nighttime collision with SUV

 
BY the associated press | Published: November 6, 2009    Comment on this article Leave a comment

ENID — A runaway elephant hit by a sport utility vehicle Wednesday night blended in with the roadway and couldn’t be seen until the last second, the driver said Thursday.

photo - Circus workers prepare to load an elephant onto a tractor-trailer Wednesday night to return it to the Garfield County Fairgrounds in Enid. Photo by Billy Hefton, Enid News & Eagle/AP
Circus workers prepare to load an elephant onto a tractor-trailer Wednesday night to return it to the Garfield County Fairgrounds in Enid. Photo by Billy Hefton, Enid News & Eagle/AP

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"Didn’t have time to hit the brakes,” driver Bill Carpenter said Thursday. "At the very last second I said ‘elephant!’”

Carpenter, 68, said he swerved his sport utility vehicle and ended up sideswiping the 29-year-old female Asian elephant on U.S. 81 in Enid.

"So help me Hannah, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us,” he said. "We’d have been history.”

The couple, who own a wheat farm, were not injured. But the 8-foot, 4,500-pound elephant, identified as Kamba by the animal protection group In Defense of Animals, was being examined Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said the elephant appeared to have escaped major injury.

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Related Topics: Social Issues, Animal Rights, Veterinary Medicine



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