Ahmed the elephant

 I was surprised and delighted to see that today's 'Google Doodle' is all about Ahmed !  

He was thought to be the Kenya elephant with the largest tusks (probably because he lived in the forest on Mount Marsabit in the northern Kenya desert) .... on the route to Lake Rudolf/Turkana.    We safari-ed to Marsabit several times, usually camping at Lake Paradise (or Gof Bongoli) which is a crater lake in an extinct volcano cone.  It is surrounded by forest and it is very spooky camping there at night, with the sounds of unseen animals and birds of the night !

We saw him just a year or two before he died; he had a presidential protection order on him, and was protected by two armed guards day and night .... as well as having two younger bull elephants always with him as his companions.   It is said his tusks were so long that he could only walk up hills backwards !  He got used to the two askari's always guarding him, and the guards would escort visitors to a safe distance so they could see Ahmed.  Marsabit being so remote, I doubt there were many tourists going up there, when other ellies with (less) large tusks could be seen more easily in Amboseli or Tsavo. 

One day, the askari's couldn't see Ahmed or his two companion elephants, and searched in the forest until they found his body, still protected by his 'companions'; he had just died of old age, not killed by poachers.

His body was taken and preserved at the National Museum in Nairobi, where I took Suzie and Tim to see him in 1996; I emailed daughter Liz today to tell her about the 'doodle' and asked if she remembers seeing him .... she must have been about 2 and a half when she saw him .... we had taken two friends up to Marsabit to show them the desert and the mountain just a few dayas before Christmas, which meant we travelled back to Nairobi on Boxing Day, having missed Christmas, but for the benefit of the children, we adjusted the calendar a little, and  celebrated Christmas on the 27th December !

Ahmeds tusks were about 150 lbs in weight each, probably the largest ever recorded.