191places, it’s tasty. If you eat it, it’s yummy! It brings quite a taste to your mouth. It goes and
digs up one or two mouthfuls of that clay with its foot, and when the elephant eats it, its
diarrhoea stops... It can get worms in its belly. There’s no good medicine for that nowa-
days. You need bamboo leaves, leaves of the dwarf bamboo. You don’t fi nd that anymore.
Dwarf bamboo leaves, they’re good for elephants.
Makkaḷu a:ga:dakka, sette bardille. Adu taḍdu irtade, hoṭṭe oḷage. A:neka ue a:gira bahudu,
be:re pera:ṇika ue a:gira bahudu. Ag:a si:re soppu endu ade, si:re endale bidiru soppu,
kiribidiru soppu. A: kiribidiru soppa ho:gi tinda:ga horagaḍe bartade. Innu goṭṭi sekke
ade—a:neka ue a:gali, namaga ue a:gali, kaṇṇige ka:vaḷa, tale suttu bartade. Tale suttu
bandale goṭṭi sekke tinda:ga suttu nindottu. Matte a:ne e:vadondu ti:niya tinduru ho:ga
ho:ga, a:neka ondu tara sokku irtade. Huṭṭida mansaniga ka:yalu bardiddada? Bande ban-
dade. Ha:geve ha:gondu ka:yalu a:neka banda:ga adu si:ge paṭṭe eḍdu—sokku si:ge—
adara amba tindu uṭṭale a:ga adakka bandira manku oḍdottu.
At childbirth , the placenta is [sometimes] not expelled. It remains stuck within the belly. It
can happen to elephants , it can also happen to other animals. There’s something called si:re
soppu , it’s just the leaves of the dwarf bamboo. If the animal goes and eats some, the pla-
centa is expelled. There’s also the bark of the goṭṭi plant—sometimes your eyes go dark,
and your head spins. It happens to us, and it happens to elephants. When elephants feel
dizzy, they go and eat some goṭṭi bark, and the spinning stops. And sometimes elephants
feel weak, as they walk along. Don’t humans fall ill in the same way? They certainly do.
When an elephant gets something like that, it peels off some bark of the si:ge plant—the
sokku si:ge plant—if it eats that vine, the drowsiness that has descended upon it goes away.
The relationship between animals and plants can sometimes be antagonistic, and
Solega children are warned by their elders not to touch plants like guḍsã and cikka
ku:guri ambu , whose seeds may cause one’s skin to itch or blister. Elephants can also
be affected by plants such as Lantana , whose thorn-lined woody stems create barri-
ers so impenetrable that even these large mammals are reluctant to walk through.
Sometimes, an elephant simply has no choice, and the results are unpleasant:
Ku:guri ambu endale ba:ri oḷḷe u:ṭa adakka. Adu la:nṭa:na me:le ho:girutte. La:ṇṭa:na
me:le ho:da:ga tinnakka:galla. Adakka pu:ra la:nṭa:na oḷa:ge nuggutte adu. La:ṇṭa:na
oḷa:ge a:ne ho:da:ga muḷḷella pu:ra eḷta:ku uḍte, mai ella. Adara mai ella pu:ra ga:ya
ma:ḍu uḍte, a:neka. A:va:ga idda a:neka uve i:va:ga idda a:neka uve vetya:sa irutte.
E:kandale a:va:ga o:panalli o:ḍa:ḍtittu, i:ga tondari pu:ra adakka. E:kandale i:ga tinna
be:ku enda:ga illinda ti:nika kashṭa:gi ho:ga be:ku.
The ku:guri vine is something they really like to eat. It grows over the Lantana. When it
does that (the elephant ) can’t eat it. That’s why it must go right into the Lantana bushes.
When an elephant goes into Lantana bushes, its skin gets scratched all over by the thorns.
The elephant gets cut up quite badly by them. There’s a difference between the elephants of
the past and the elephants you see today. Because back then, they’d run around freely in the
open, but now they have a lot of problems. Because now when they want to eat, it’s really
hard for them to get to the food.
Solega knowledge of the trophic habits of elephants is rivalled only by their
knowledge of honeybees. As mentioned above (and in Chap. 7 ), the temporal rela-
tionships between migratory honeybees and certain fl owers are known to the Solega,
as are the links between variously-fl avoured honeys and the mass fl owering of
particular plants. Finally, the signifi cance of known (and named) je: nu mara ‘ bee
tree s ’ to the Solega cannot be overstated, as these represent an important, annual
source of both income and calories.