What a fucked up title. Upstanding dude dies in an unfortunate accident and the title makes fun of his very moral standing.

He stuck to his guns, or rather he didn't.

RIP.

I've seen this. I mean, not this exact case, but I'm like 70% sure I know what happened without even reading the article.

So 20 years ago I was watching tv, and they had this story where a zoo keeper was just ambushed by an elephant, and thrown around by it's trunk. Threw him against a retaining wall, to knock him out, them stomped on him, and kicked him. Then ran around in a frenzy.

Watching it, it's like the elephant snapped and went crazy. There's one key piece of context missing. Ears.

We can't hear everything an elephant can. Their ears are highly sensitive. There can be an elephant 5 miles away calling out in pain, and elephants 5 miles away will charge towards that call for help, killing all predators along the way.

Now, was it a case of another elephant in the zoo calling for help? No actually. It was the zookeeper that was calling out in pain. Or rather his pocket.

His cell phone was creating a high pitched squeel. We can't hear it. The elephants hear it, and it causes their ear drums pain. The elephant basically was reacting to a threat in it's zoo enclosure causing him pain.

My guess is, in this posted story, the safari guide had a cell phone, and it did whatever triggers elephants. And I'm sure I'm the only one reading this story who would have even thought of that. All because I saw a story on TV probably in 2003, that stuck with me.

I always turn my cell phone off, and take out the battery whenever I go to a zoo. I know nobody else does, but my theory is, the elephant won't target ME when it breaks free, since I'm not a source of painful noise. I just gotta outrun the fatties, and the parents with dumb kids.

Don't let your dreams be dreams.

I hope he went quickly, and I hope that he felt like a valued person in the end. Fucking shame.

“As the group were walking, an elephant suddenly emerged and charged at him,” Mashaba said. "He tried to scare it off with the revolver he was carrying, but he was ultimately attacked by the elephant."

“There is no evidence that suggests the firearm was used," the police spokesperson added.

Wait... what? So he tried to threaten an Elephant with just pointing a gun? Or was he unable to fire it in time, even as a warning shot?

After the reserve announced Freeman’s death on Facebook on Friday, April 10, tributes poured in — including from one community member who claimed that Freeman once said he "would rather be killed by” an elephant than shoot one.

This is pretty thin. Not saying that it isn't true, but headlines are now just "things I read on facebook". This whole story is weird.

All of us have to die.

That is inescapable.

He died participating in the Nature he both loved & respected.

While unfortunate, count the number of people who die of exposure while homeless, the number of people who die of homicide, & the number of people who die of drugs.

I think he got a more-honest, more-worthy death than many of us do.

&, of course, depending on the configuration of his mind when he died, universe will recycle his-continuum/soul in whatever way it does.

( for all who insist that life is "created by nothing" and "disappears to nothing" at the end of an incarnation, because "only matter, not spirit or mind, is real", the meaning you can take with you is the only "coin" that can alter a next-life.

I'm saying that having been too cowardly to commit suicide this-incarnation, .. because a previous-someone/life/incarnation was a suicide, & that's why this life was worse.

The New Age idiocy of making-believing that being perpetually-recycled in endless-stream-of-universes .. somehow means that one is entitled to have heavenly-reincarnation .. is only delusion.

All the reincarnations who ended-up being caught in inquisition, or nazism, or gulags, or whatever: assumed-entitlement didn't do them any good, did it?

I hope the configuration of his mind was good, when he died.

He died an honest death.

I hope I've the guts to do-so too, when it's my time to go. : )

_ /\ _

We’ll never know if he changed his mind at the end.

Note: he said elephant, not charging elephant.